By Leslie Lindsay April showers bring May flowers…and so does JoAnn Early Macken, author of Flip, Float, Fly…Seeds on the Move.  When I first came across this darling picture book for children, I was a participant in the Write-by-the-Lake Summer Retreat in Madison, Wisconsin.  Ms. Early-Macken was presenting a session on writing children’s storybooks–which all have 32 pages, and some kind of rhyme or lilt about them.  (Don’t ask me much more, as I didn’t take her workshop.  I was too busy with adult fiction.  But I did buy her book for my then 7-year old garden lover). I love the simple, heirloom-quality illustrations, paired with Early-Macken’s gently swaying prose, this book is hands-down a spring-time favorite at our house.  Readers–parents and children alike–will learn how seeds use ingenious methods to travel to new places to put down roots.  I abolutely adore her use of ontomonapeoas (that is, words that sound like the sound they make in real life), crunch, crackle, fling, pop!  Plop!  SWISH… A fun book to read this spring while teaching your kiddos …