Du Iz Tak?

Product Information

Ik weet niet hoe je de voorbije weken hebt doorgebracht. Zelf was ik sinds FBM16 in oktober graag bezig met opruimen. Niet alleen met het opruimen van mijn werkkamer, maar ook van mijn hoofd. Je hebt geen idee hoe nodig dat dan is. Via Facebook ging ik groepen volgen die met evenwicht en rust en verminderen bezig zijn. Ik volg nooit blindelings. Ik wil graag weten wat The Minimalists denken, maar wat ze schrijven beschouw ik als food for thought. Ze nemen mijn leven niet over. 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.

You created the illustration for the Picture Book Proclamation, which we featured in our interview with your friend and author Mac Barnett. We asked him the following question: Have you observed any changes that make you hopeful about the creation of children's books going forward? Carson, what are your thoughts on this? I love this book!! It is all wonderful strangeness, fun, language and innovation (not to mention Carson Ellis' gorgeous artwork). 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. 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). Carson Ellis has created a fantastic microcosm with her usual grace and inventiveness…I was completely captivated by Ellis’s wonderful creatures, their charming little world and their droll language.There is a show of your personal work at The Nationale Gallery in Portland, Oregon. We're interested in how your art supports and complements your illustration work for picture books. But their joyful plan is unceremoniously interrupted by a giant spider, who envelops their new playground in a web — a reminder that in nature, where one creature’s loss is another’s gain and vice versa, gain and loss are always counterbalanced in perfect equilibrium with no ultimate right and ultimate wrong.

But then, nature once again asserts her central dictum of impermanence and constant change: The flower begins to wilt. As the bugs resume repair and construction, the bud blossoms into invigorating beauty. Drawn to the small miracle of the flower, other tiny forest creatures join the joyful labor — the ants interrupt their own industry, the slug slides over in wide-eyed wonder, the bees and the butterflies hover in admiration, and even the elder’s wife emerges from the tree trunk, huffing a pipe as she marvels at the new blossom.And aside from the fact that I do oh so much love love love the illustrations, the both detailed and also sweetly simple and colourful renderings of imagined insect life (and really, truly, I for one have enjoyed Carson Ellis' pictorial images and colour schemes so much that I am indeed feeling a tiny bit grumpy that Du Iz Tak? has ONLY won a 2017 Caldecott Honour designation and not the actual Caldecott Medal), in this here review, I will and of course mostly be waxing poetic with regard to the presented narrative, with regard to the author's invented text, an "artificial" language that is both simple and profound, and a constructed narrative that actually (or at least this has been the case for me) has been relatively easy to figure out simply by using the context of the illustrations and basic universal language rules and facts. 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?

Met dit boek geef je aan wie naar je luistert door dat jij niet de baas bent. Want als het winter wordt, wordt het stil. Tot er weer twee beesten bij een scheutje staan en de ene vraagt: Kek iz tak? So Carson wrote out her text for the first time—in English. “We gave them the translation and they completely rewrote their own version,” Ellis said.This circular story begins with a green shoot as it starts to grow. Two damsel flies watch it unfurl and soon more and more bugs begin to arrive. “What is that?” they wonder. Tension mounts with the arrival of a spider and then a large bird and the cycle of life continues. The whole story is told through an invented, lyrical ‘bug’ language, as the insects chat to each other. 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? 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. I feel like Du Iz Tak offers a great opportunity to have a conversation with kids about having a growth mindset and about not giving up just because something is hard or unfamiliar. I have at last managed to get hold of 'Du Iz Tak?' and I was not disappointed, what a gem! This is a vibrant story that follows a collection of bugs and insects in discovering and exploring the growth of a plant. It shows the highs and lows that come with the natural cycle, the joyful possibilities of new life and the threat emerging from the unwanted arrival of other species. Dark humour is rife throughout the story, with events unraveling unbeknown to those protecting the plant, and creating some excellent dramatic irony. The expressive illustrations are a delight, and only add to the hilarity and sense of wonder.

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.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.