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? 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? 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.

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. With beautiful illustrations that are full of detail and whimsy, Carson Ellis has created an imaginative and quirky world, hidden away at the bottoms of the garden. Written in an entirely invented language, this playful book cleverly shows how meaning can be found even without understanding the words. A brilliant book for children who are making their first tentative steps in learning to read. A delightfully unique tale that his the possibility to change with every reading. * Carousel * 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.

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! 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.There are loads of language and reading comprehension benefits for kids here. Even though you have no idea what they're saying its a simple matter to use the context clues to work things out and the gibberish is super fun to say ("gladenboot" being my personal favorite). But there's also a real sort of innocent joy to the whole thing. Ellis's illustrations are just shy of being surrealistically frightening. The bugs have very human features and limbs but there's just enough softness and clever use of charming sort of turn of the century clothes that keep things from getting downright nightmarish. The colors are wonderful to, a little muted and very earthy. There are also loads of lovely, tiny details that you only catch if you read it several times which my sons' took great pride in pointing out when they discovered them. But then, nature once again asserts her central dictum of impermanence and constant change: The flower begins to wilt. 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 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. 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.)

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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?