Minnie and Moo and the Musk of Zorro - Softcover

Denys Cazet, an accomplished author and illustrator, says that it is by listening to himself and others that he gets his book ideas. "I try to pay attention to the human condition and how the daily dramas, our daily encounters and experiences, our sorrows and joys, change our lives. It is not easy to pay attention, but if you want to learn to write or draw well you will have to learn."

He also says that writing is hard work. "I spend a lot of time rewriting my stories. I'm very happy when I've finished a new story. After all I am the proud mother and father of all the characters who live there."

His most recent children's books, Minnie and Moo Go to Paris and Minnie and Moo Save the Earth (DK Ink 1999) chronicle the continuing adventures of a hilarious bovine duo. The couple debuted with two books in 1998, which both received Publishers Weekly starred reviews and were chosen as Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon books for 1998. Booklist noted in a boxed review that "Cazet knows how to milk the humor in his terrific artwork, too." Minnie and Moo and the Thanksgiving Tree and Minnie and Moo and the Musk of Zoro, forthcoming from DK Ink in Fall 2,000, will continue this series.

Mr. Cazet's first book, a drawing book for children, was published in 1973, and he has published well over a dozen books since. He has written and illustrated two School Library Journal Best Books of the Year: A Fish in His Pocket and "I'm Not Sleepy!" His best-selling "Never Spit on Your Shoes" won the California Young Reader Medal.

Mr. Cazet and his family live in Pope Valley in Northern California.

Cazet has struck a vein of precious ore in his "Minnie and Moo" series for beginning readers. These are simple books, but have a distinct, eccentric narrative that displays gumption, decency, and dreams on the cows' part. The stories are also funny, accompanied by dry, witty artwork and a hint of naughtiness that refuses to swim into focus. Here, Moo sighs wistfully over the lack of heroes in the modern world. "You have been reading again, haven't you?" demands her boon companion Minnie, neatly investing the act of reading with all the subversiveness it deserves. Moo points to Zorro as a role model: "Most days he just hung around. But on some days, he dressed in black and scared away the bad guys with a sword." Moo's enthusiasm is infectious and soon she and Minnie are dressing up as a pair of cow Zorros, complete with a sword tipped with a discarded tube of lipstick and a can of deodorant: The Musk of Zorro. They sally forth to do some good deeds around the farm. They liberate the chickens from the opportunings of the rooster; they neutralize two pair of the farmer's long underwear flapping on the clothesline. This sparks some high farce between the farmer and his wife, who wants to know how the letters P U got written in lipstick on the long johns. She thinks it's a vindictive neighbor. The farmer notes, "I thinks it's those two cows on the hill." A delightful, clean, and spare story brimming with comedy, typeset so that it can be read like free verse, such as this existential item: "Are we all just cows/waiting to get hooked up/to the electric milker?" (Easy reader. 6-8) -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.