Last year, 705BLACKFLY.COM introduced you to author and gardening podcaster Erin Alladin. Her book, ‘Wait Like a Seed’, explores the life cycle of milkweed and its vital relationship to monarch butterflies. It has been honored as a Recommended Reading title by the 2026 Green Earth Book Award in the Picture Book Primary category.
Announced each Earth Day since 2004, the Green Earth Book Award is the biggest award in the United States to recognize books that promote environmental stewardship to children and young adults. It is operated by The Nature Generation, an environmental nonprofit that inspires and empowers youth to make a difference for the Earth.
“I look forward to the Green Earth Book Award every year to find out what the most valuable new books are for helping kids feel excited and empowered about caring for the Earth,” Erin says. “Finding my own book on the list was a shock and a deep honour.”
Erin, who is also the co-host of the gardening podcast ‘Plants Always Win’, spent her childhood summers rescuing monarch caterpillars from damaged milkweed plants on Parry Sound-area roadsides. In ‘Wait Like a Seed’, she merges a science lesson about how plants grow with a reflection on growing up and feeling connected to the life around us. The book uses rhyming quatrains to narrate the life cycle of a flowering plant. One passage reads: Wait like a seed – cozy and small. Wait like a seed – til the spring rains fall.
In cozy illustrations by award-winning artist Tara Anderson, two young siblings watch the progress of common milkweed from seeds sprouting in the spring to plants releasing their own seeds in the fall. Meanwhile, monarch butterflies that lay their eggs on the milkweed’s leaves undergo their own transition from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult. At the back of the book, nine full-colour pages of supporting material detail the stages of milkweed and monarch life cycles, fascinating facts about both, and the monarch butterfly’s remarkable migration cycle. It includes a glossary, selected readings, and a resource list for those who want to grow their own milkweed and support monarchs.
A new paperback edition of “Wait Like a Seed” was released in March 2026 and is available at Pajama Press. Other books written by Erin include
Erin is working on a new book that’s also related to gardening, so keep an eye out for that!
To watch our 2025 video interview with Erin click here.
