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Du Iz Tak?

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When I taught Elementary School, decoding and inferring were skills that I taught. Therefore, the teacher in me just HAD to make a more worksheet style printable as well for all the fellow teachers out there. The difference between that one and the one photographed is that it includes a place for students to put there name at the top, some critical thinking/discussion questions at the bottom and some instructions for handing it in.

I love reading it with my students, (and my own kids) and seeing the blank looks on their faces when it begins, and they realize the dialogue is not in English. I assure them that we’ll figure it out together using the illustrations and context clues, and then we do. I pause as we go along and ask them what they think several of the words or phrases mean, and every time, someone guesses the right word or phrase in English (or at least what I think is right.)A tiny tale told by tiny creatures about BIG ideas. Told though the language of insects, Du Iz Tak? is a story about the cycle of life and all its impermanence. A stunning visual aesthetic combined with clever puppetry make this new adaptation of Carson Ellis’s picture book a total delight." 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. 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. 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. The marvelously illustrated story is written in the imagined language of bugs, the meaning of which the reader deduces with delight from the familiar human emotions they experience throughout the story — surprise, exhilaration, fear, despair, pride, joy. We take the title to mean “What is that?”— the exclamation which the ento-protagonists issue upon discovering a swirling shoot of new growth, which becomes the centerpiece of the story as the bugs try to make sense, then make use, of this mysterious addition to their homeland. “Ma nazoot,” answers another —“I don’t know.”

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. There’s an elusive yet distinctly joyful quality to Carson Ellis’s picture book that feels like suspended glee, or a laugh caught halfway in the throat. As in her 2015 debut, “Home,” the gouache and ink illustrations in “Du Iz Tak?” are chic and subtly witty. But this time Ms. Carson matches them with dialogue in the enchanting foreign language of the elegantly dressed beetles and insects that live on a small, eventful patch of earth. Sophisticated, curious, well-dressed bugs watch as a plant shoot grows and blossoms into a magnificent flower. Their miniature world is alluringly well-realized and includes an invented language, which young readers delight in decoding. 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? Du Iz Tok? has been sold in many different countries including Sweden, Holland, Germany, Portugal and China. Translations had to ensure that the nuances from each different language were accounted for, so that the ‘gibberish’ still worked.This book is absolutely genius! Carson Ellis wrote this lovely picture book all in a language that she completely made up! However, it isn’t complete and total gibberish because she paired her curious little insects with illustrations that help tell the story and repeats her new words in a pattern that helps you decode what the insects may actually be saying. This leaves the reader feeling quite proud and intelligent because they aren’t lost the whole time, in fact, they can follow the story quite well! 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.

I will seriously have so much fun with this book. I can already picture myself using this in some of my classrooms. It's written completely in an invented language, but we can more or less infer the meaning of the dialogue. "More or less" still leaves lots of room for imagination and interpretation. "Du iz tak?" might mean "What is this?" or maaaybe it means "Are you yummy?" Who's to say it can't be either? In that sense it lets us as the readers become the narrators. There are lots of opportunities to embed thematic learning experiences (seasons, plants, insects) but, if nothing else, it's lots of fun! After we finish, I ask them what they thought about it. They always tell me that, at first, it made them uncomfortable when they realized that the book wasn’t in their language, and they thought it would be hard to follow the story.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). There are secrets in the undergrowth. A ‘gladdenboot’ is peeking up from the soil, a bug buzzes above and a large ladybird bustles about self importantly. Beneath a broadcloth sky, to a music-box tune, insects in hats or with spectacles emerge, chatting their own insect language, getting ready for whatever the new day brings. 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. Du Iz Tak? has a sweet and simple premise. A flower begins to grow beside a fallen log and various adorable insects fascinated and confused by its size and ever increasing splendor ask each other "Du Iz Tak?" (what is that)? As the plant grows bigger and more beautiful they play in its leaves, build a pirate ship and a fort and defend it from predators. Finally the seasons begin to change and they say goodbye (ta ta furt!) as the flower finally droops and dies only to have a whole new crop of flowers begin to grow come spring! Night comes, then autumn, bringing their own magic as the world silently performs its eternal duty of churning the cycle of growth and decay.

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