Du Iz Tak?

Product Information

A stunning visual aesthetic combined with clever puppetry make this new adaptation of Carson Ellis’s picture book a total delight. The illustrations are wonderful and each spread offers plenty of details about life in the bugs' world - a twig is not a twig, a toadstool grows, insects serenade one another under a moonlit sky - the circle of life continues. Sophisticated, curious, well-dressed bugs watch as a plant shoot grows and blossoms into a magnificent flower.

And, honestly, if you think about it, picture books are full of words their audience doesn’t understand at first. Ellis is best known as an illustrator, and her oversized gouache and ink spreads deftly balance playfulness and precision, intricacy and airy background…Readers-aloud will want a practice run to ensure their intonation carries the meaning of the words, but it will all make perfect and pleasing sense to imaginative listeners.This really is an ingenious book which, through its visual literacy, stimulates the spoken and written word effortlessly and with a great deal of fun. Even the night-time creatures are fascinated by the plant, with a snail coming to investigate it and a melodious cricket serenading it from a nearby log. A bold retro color palette and lots of white space allow a big beautiful story plenty of room to breathe. In 2018, a short animated film version was released by Weston Woods Studios, a division of Scholastic, adapted, directed, and animated by Galen Fott.

Candy Gourlay introduces Wild Song, her companion novel to Bone Talk, in which Luki and Samkad leave their home in the Philippines for America. 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. The pictures depict more than you initially might think so every time you read the story you find new details.

Even backstage is beautiful, with the puppets nestling in an old fashioned sewing box, and the exit corridor decorated with rag-bunting and little Du Iz Tak? It's a genuinely charming story with brain-tickling interest from the dialogue, and it earns a satisfying edge from the silent and decisive victory over the spider. Here's a bright, refined fantasy world to be lost in, and one that has its dark, seasonal drama to boot.

The creator of Home explores the astonishing changes in a garden, where insects talk their own mysterious language. It’s just so beautiful and the fact that it is written in Chinese characters makes it even more inscrutable,” she said. The entire story unfolds on the same small stretch of ground, where each new detail is integral to the scene at hand. I had it translated in my head, but I hadn’t written it down,” Ellis said, “so when Liz asked, ‘Does this actually mean anything? 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.

Carson Ellis is the author-illustrator of the celebrated, New York Times bestseller Home , her debut solo picture book, as well as being the illustrator of The Composer Is Dead , written by Lemony Snicket, and Dillweed’s Revenge, written by Florence Parry Heide. A book thta continues to develop with rereads - you are encouraged to decode the language that on first glance looks like gobbledeegook.