If You Go Walking

by Erin Alladin, Miki Sato (Illustrator)

Overview

If you go walking, / You might collect berries, / Or pebbles, / Or wildflowers. / I collect questions.  

 Time spent in the outdoors during Fall and Winter stirs a child’s curiosity. In If You Go Walking, a thoughtful thread of questions (How do seeds know not to grow until spring?) invites young readers to explore the world around them with wonder. In nature, questions are everywhere, and answers can be too, if you know the right places to look.   

 Author Erin Alladin invites young readers to think deeply in this lyrical nonfiction text, celebrating children’s curiosity about the world around them. Illustrator Miki Sato’s textural collage art recreates the wonder of the outdoors in paper, felt, and embroidery silk, creating masterpieces that invite readers to look again and again. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781772783513
Publisher:	Pajama Press Inc.
Publication date:	11/25/2025
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD600L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Erin Alladin is an author and freelance editor who has always resisted choosing between her passions for ecology and literacy. During her decade working in children’s book publishing, she spent her free hours running a Toronto community permaculture garden. After moving back to her home region of Northern Ontario she co-founded the gardening podcast Plants Always Win. Erin’s nonfiction picture books, Wait Like a Seed and the celebrated Outside, You Notice, praise the natural world and kids’ innate ability to learn from it. When Erin isn’t taking long walks in nature, she  can be found growing vegetables and editing books in a little house near Parry Sound with her wife, a forest full of birds, and (still) not enough bookshelves.  

Miki Sato is a Japanese-Canadian illustrator who uses a variety of different textures and materials to create three-dimensional images. Originally from Ottawa, she moved to Toronto to complete her degree in illustration from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Miki has received many honors for her picture books: her book Snow Days was a finalist for the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award, Sunny Days was a 2021 CBC Books Best Book, Windy Days won a Northern Lights Book Award, and While You Sleep was shortlisted for the Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Books of the Year. Her most recent book is Chidori.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for If You Go Walking

“A heartfelt paean to proto-scientists and everything left in this world for them to discover.”—Kirkus Reviews

“It’s a nice lyrical way of telling these stories.... and it’s loaded with lots of good STEM content”—Fuse 8, Betsy Bird

“Leaping visually across seasons from spring to the end of a snowy winter, it’s a thoughtful tribute to the power of observation.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2025-08-16
Questions—but not answers—abound in this celebration of natural curiosity.

One can collect lots of things while on a walk, but the pale-skinned, bespectacled young hero of this tale gathers something special: questions, including everything from “How can mushrooms show up so suddenly?” to “How deep do tree roots go?” Seasons change, but the child’s mind continues to race. Why? Because, “The thing about answers is, / They’re a lot like seeds. / If you take them home and plant them, / they will grow.” There’s a poetic cadence to Alladin’s free verse, as when the protagonist discusses bright winter days when “the sun is all light and no heat.” Questions and observations are grouped into small blue boxes, separate from the main text. Though the queries aren’t answered, young readers will have a ball mulling them over. Meanwhile, Sato’s adept and meticulous cut-paper images perfectly replicate a misty day and snowy rambles in the woods. The illustrator also skillfully works mixed-media elements (for instance, replicating the downy fuzz of a chickadee) into the art. And lest adult readers fret over a child traversing the woods with only a dog for company, a pale-skinned caregiver and younger sibling are often visible, following at a distance. A note at the book’s end advises kids on what to do on “wandery-wondery walks.”

A heartfelt paean to proto-scientists and everything left in this world for them to discover.(Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews