Du Iz Tak?

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It also became clear that many publishers didn’t realize that Ellis’s dialogue was more than nonsense. The first attempt at translating the text into French raised a red flag for the author. “I used ‘ribble’ for ladder and I used it twice to help a reader intuit what it meant,” Ellis recalled. “But in the first French version there was no repeated word. So we asked about that and they were surprised to learn that my gibberish actually meant something.” I would say that after having now read this approximately 5,000 times I am not only an expert in the charming nonsense language Carson Ellis uses to tell the story of a community of bugs making a startling discovery that leads to wonderful adventures but also a fan of the author for life.

Complement the impossibly wonderful Du Iz Tak? with the Japanese pop-up masterpiece Little Tree— a very different meditation on the cycle of life based on a similar sylvan metaphor — then revisit Ellis’s Home, one of the greatest children’s books of 2015. It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis,” Henry Miller wrote in contemplating art and the human future. The beautiful Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi invites us to find meaning and comfort in impermanence, and yet so much of our suffering stems from our deep resistance to the ruling law of the universe — that of impermanence and constant change. How, then, are we to accept the one orbit we each have along the cycle of life and inhabit it with wholeheartedness rather than despair? April 26, 2018 Since a picture book is often the first exposure to art for many children, we appreciate your commitment that the work deserves to be of the highest quality. Do you have some key points for aspiring illustrators or authors to keep them on that path? Written entirely in the playful and amusing language of bugs, it isn’t necessary to speak fluent moth or ladybug to enjoy the growth and metamorphoses creatively combined through Carson Ellis’s delightful words and fanciful illustrations as the seasons subtly transform.I thought it would be fun to share how my students and I have translated the bug language in Du Iz Tak over the last two years. I have no confirmation if any of this is accurate, but I feel like most of it is at least close. That’s why it’s an “unofficial” dictionary. But when the bird leaves, one of them discovers — with the excited exclamation “Su!,” which we take to mean “Look!”— that the plant has not only survived the invasion but has managed, in the meantime, to produce a glorious, colorful bud. Night comes, then autumn, bringing their own magic as the world silently performs its eternal duty of churning the cycle of growth and decay. Ellis’s ( Home) bewitching creation stars a lively company of insects who speak a language unrelated to English, and working out what they are saying is one of the story’s delights…Very gently, Ellis suggests that humans have no idea what wonders are unfolding at their feet—and that what takes place in the lives of insects is not so different from their own. Has there ever been anything quite like it? Ma nazoot. Then we talk about how they did, in the end, get what was going on because they left their brains on, and kept trying to figure it out. So often, when confronted with something new, or something we don’t understand, we shut our brains off and quit trying.

When you say that kids can "get it" is that because you feel we sometimes underestimate a child's ability to understand and appreciate a subject matter that is darker and more complex? Honestly, Carson Ellis' absolutely delightful Du Iz Tak? (What is That?) is for me not only a perfect picture book both illustratively and textually, but is also a book which I dearly wish I could rate with more than the five star maximum allowed by Goodreads (as in my opinion, Du Iz Tak? is a ten star offering, a glowingly amazing and evocative homage to life, to the seasons, to imagination and fun, and to have a text, to have a narrative that presents an invented language, well, for linguistically inclined and interested me, that was and is truly the appreciated icing on an already most delightful and delicious cake). Yes, within reason. I don't think that all kids are ready to deal with whatever subject matter we want to lob at them obviously. My five-year-old is wild for horror. He loves scary stuff so I read him scary stories (I love horror too). But I won't read him Otto in the Tomi Ungerer anthology I just bought because it's about the Holocaust and we're Jewish and he's five. I don't think it's time for that conversation yet. For some other five-year-old and his mom it wouldn't be time for horror yet either. We're all different and we're entitled to set our own boundaries and make our own judgement calls. So it's probably too simple to say that kids "get it" and we should be exposing them to more difficult stuff. But, yes, I do think in general we tend to shelter them more than they want or need when it comes to books. I also think that in general we expect books for kids to have some kind of moral takeaway, some lesson to learn and I think that's a bummer. Books are art and when we make them for children they should reflect what makes literature and visual art wonderful to us, as adults. Of course some books should teach lessons. But some shouldn't. The handwritten type in your books add to their style. Though not strictly calligraphic, the source is evident with your distinctive art. How did you come to that choice and do you anticipate always using your own hand-drawn type? As the bugs witness the spider’s doing in dejected disbelief, a bird — a creature even huger and more formidable — swoops in to eat the spider and further devastates the stalk-fort. At its base, we see the bugs grow from disheartened to heartbroken. Assuming you have had the opportunity to read Du Iz Tak?to kids in schools or on your book tours, what was their reaction to the text? Do they ask you to translate it for them? Do they come up with their own meaning? Have you learned anything unexpected about your book from these experiences?Je spreekt een vreemde taal die eigenlijk niet zo vreemd is. Je bent een mot, een kever, een lieveheersbeestje. (Als tegengif voor wat er nu gebeurt is dat precies goed.) Je geeft ondertussen mee dat de seizoenen elkaar — wat er ook gebeurt — opvolgen. De natuur gaat door met leven en sterven. It is about a community of insects that discover something new one day. It is a sprouting plant and they watch this new plant grow and develop and interact with the changes in their environment. As a reader you get to follow it through the seasons to the next spring where, to the insects delight, more sprouts appear. The illustration have a minimalist feel due to Carson’s wonderful use of blank space, however, they are incredibly detailed with luxurious textures on every object down to the tiniest insect’s wings. Ellis’ precise and detailed illustrations of bespectacled bugs and an elaborate fort utterly beguile…It would be easy to make such a story clever for the sake of being clever, but instead Ellis has created one of the smartest, most original and most endearing picture books of this year. Du iz tak? It’s a keeper is what it is. The discoverers of the shoot enlist the help of a wise and many-legged elder who lives inside a tree stump — a character reminiscent in spirit of Owl in Winnie-the-Pooh. He lends the operation his ladder and the team begins building an elaborate fort onto the speedily growing plant. She submitted a manuscript with text only. “The words were all gibberish and there were no sketches,” she recalled. “Just a lot of illustration notes like, ‘Two damsel flies approach a small plant.’”

I love this book!! It is all wonderful strangeness, fun, language and innovation (not to mention Carson Ellis' gorgeous artwork). THIS BOOK. Du Iz Tak? is up there as one of my surprise favourites of the year. I became familiar with Carson Ellis' gorgeous illustrative work after reading her picture book Home, and poring over her illustrations for The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Wildwood Chronicles. Du Iz Tak? is an entire world- and another level- of wow. Written entirely in imagined insect-speak- beginning with the seemingly innocuous 'Du iz tak?', readers are taken on a fantastical, thrilling and wondrous journey with beautiful, elegant insects. From their discovery of a tiny shoot which then grows and grows through the seasons, the insects adapt and impress with every change- or danger- thrust upon them. With Ellis' stunning illustrations as the readers' guide, much of the delight of Du Iz Tak? resides with deciphering the language of the insects...and even more delight rests in coming to some revelations about their language!The fort collapses and the bugs, looking not terribly distraught — perhaps because they know that this is nature’s way, perhaps because they know that they too will soon follow the flower’s fate in this unstoppable cycle of life — say farewell and walk off.