Du Iz Tak?
The story begins and ends with a question. As nonsensical as the opening words are—Du iz tak?—from the start, their meaning is clear. With the entire book written in a nonsensical language, why is it that we seem to understand?
Du Iz Tak? opens with a pair of insects peering over a tiny sprout, wondering what it might be. In many ways, this is a story of the delight in what might be. The elderly and sophisticated couple who first happen upon the sprout leave the question with a shrug and move on. A question, an idea, some possibility, are left waiting. It isn’t until a group of friends find the little plant that an idea begins to grow along with the sprout.
In a story where all of the dialogue is a foreign language (Ru daddin doodin unk furt!) the theme of creative generation is clear. While we have here a group of friends who find delight in transforming the seedling into their personal playscape, we also have a story about how ideas are transformed from seedling to flower. The metaphor of an idea as a seed that unfurls slowly is not new, and it offers a way of seeing ideas as benefitting from careful cultivation. Du Iz Tak? offers a slight variation on the familiar metaphor, though. Here, the metaphor of idea as seed meets idea as constructions, or in the language of the book, idea as “furt.”
The story could have ended with the rise of a single idea, but instead we are offered multiple ways of perceiving how ideas are brought to life. Alongside the hubbub of activity surrounding the collaboration of building the furt, we also witness a much quieter, more introverted, form of an idea in transformation. The metamorphosis of a caterpillar who curls itself up in the early pages of the book culminates as a dancing moth bursts from its cocoon in the final pages. A metaphor for ideas as this one draws attention to the role of solitude in bringing an idea to life. Not all ideas are born out of collaboration. Some are worked on quietly as they incubate in the mind; some are drawn out in the solitude of slow and determined working.
That Carson Ellis chooses to depict the rise and the seeming “collapse” of an idea reminds us that some ideas we carry with us until we are off on a new idea, or until they serve us no longer. There is an element of relief in the reminder that some ideas can be let go.
The process is a cycle, however. For, as we see on the final pages, there scattered on the ground where there once stood a magnificent creation are many seedlings and a question, Du iz tak?
Additional Resources
To hear Carson Ellis speak about her journey of becoming an illustrator, visit WeMake's video, WeMake--Carson Ellis. The WeMake website features various artists and makers as they share their creation processes in video, photographs, and interviews.
For a catchy and inspiring way of introducing the metaphor of idea as seed, watch this three-minute video, Mister Rogers Remixed | Garden of Your Mind | PBS Digital Studios, by John D. Boswell. The video offered my fifth-grade students and I a way of looking at ideas as something to be cultivated.
In her TED Talk, The Power of Introverts, Susan Cain draws our attention to the ways in which, if we are not mindful, schools and workplaces can perpetuate the notion that good ideas are born more often than not through gregarious collaboration over “solo flights of thought.”
* Illustrations © Carson Ellis courtesy of Candlewick Press; photographs by Iliana Gutierrez
