Du Iz Tak?

Product Information

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.

Attention is firmly focused on the set, cleverly built from a suitcase and table with a rolling canvas backdrop.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.

Theatre Royal Brighton welcomed the company in to develop and rehearse the new show during the closure of the venue and to present initial performances when lock down eased. Their miniature world is alluringly well-realized and includes an invented language, which young readers delight in decoding. No action lacks a purpose; with deft hands two puppeteers manipulate their tiny charges, building the landscape as they go. The pictures depict more than you initially might think so every time you read the story you find new details.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. 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. Tak,” for instance, is the Swedish word for “thank,” although the spelling— “tack” —differs slightly.

The creator of Home explores the astonishing changes in a garden, where insects talk their own mysterious language.Sophisticated, curious, well-dressed bugs watch as a plant shoot grows and blossoms into a magnificent flower. is its ability to draw the reader in, enticing the reader to decipher and interpret this strange language and as one does, the pace at which the story is read slows right down and you find yourself observing every minute change that has occurred. Ross Welford introduces Time Travelling with a Tortoise, the sequel to Time Travelling with a Hamster, and a whole new time travel adventure! As in a traditional wordless title, the sequential images have to be examined closely so that we can create our own version of the story. A stunning visual aesthetic combined with clever puppetry make this new adaptation of Carson Ellis’s picture book a total delight.

Ellis is best known as an illustrator, and her oversized gouache and ink spreads deftly balance playfulness and precision, intricacy and airy background. 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? 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.Editors who pitch picture books at international fairs are accustomed to having to explain the text to foreign publishers in a language they both understand, but for Candlewick’s Liz Bicknell, selling the rights to Carson Ellis’s Caldecott Honor book Du Iz Tak? The book attracted strong interest from foreign publishers, and has sold into 11 territories so far. 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.