Zidrou – författare

Ducoboo's life isn't easy. Being the king of dunces - while still managing to avoid wearing the crown too often - takes work, dedication, and an awful lot of imagination. It also takes a proper target: Leonie, the gifted girl who doesn't like to share her answers with His Majesty. It's a constant war of wits between these two, under the disbelieving eye of the long-suffering teacher, fought with wigs, cameras and magical pencil-sharpeners. And when school's over, the beach is the new battlefield!

A new year approaches for pitifully inept student Ducoboo, dunce extraordinaire and notorious troublemaker. A whole year of enduring Mr Latouche's punishments, of sharing the dunce cap with Skelly, the biology class skeleton, and of course of waging merciless war on his deskmate, top student Leonie, who refuses to let him copy her answers. But behind the dim-witted clown's facade, could Ducoboo be hiding a loyal heart?

This is a hugely humorous series. The adventures of the most adorable, brilliant, and universally appreciated dunce that the graphic novel world has invented are now available in English! The pupil Ducoboo is nice and a joker, but also a notorious dunce - a "quality" that is no bed of roses...One must be awfully resourceful to avoid the humiliating dunce's cap! But Ducoboo is brimming with imagination...Through gags, some stranger than others, this series champions values such as friendship and the right to be different, and tackles subjects such as boy-girl and parent-child relationships.

Ducoboo is always sitting a the back of the classroom and getting in trouble. He has to employ treasures of imagination to avoid getting interrogated by the teacher and having to wear the dunce cap. In his efforts to be 'a good student', he copies relentlessy on Leonie, who sits next to him and is an ace student. However, she hates people copying her work and Ducoboo ends up having to stand in the corner more than once.

What would a class be without a dunce? A bit like a curry without spice. And Ducoboo sure spices up his fellow pupils' days. Not one lesson goes by without flavour - with him, school is an endless string of break-times. Of course, there's always Leonie, the terribly gifted girl who doesn't put up with Ducoboo's messing and doesn't believe in sharing knowledge. Of course, there's also the teacher, whose index finger turns out to be more threatening than ever...No, school life isn't one long, smooth ride: for some, the school year is perhaps the most dangerous time of all!

The Beast has been captured and finds himself in the pound, waiting to be transferred to Antwerp Zoo. Little François hasn't given up on helping him—but how? He doesn't yet know it, but he can count on the help of class bully Fut-fut, who is starting to feel remorseful for having harassed his classmate. However, he will have to be wary of Professor Sneutvelmans, an undisputed expert in cryptozoology (a new scientific discipline of his own invention) who is convinced that the strange animal is proof of an ancient myth. Everyone will embark on a vast chase through the streets of Brussels. The conclusion of this two-part novel by renowned author Zidrou and celebrated gallery artist Frank Pe features spectacular scenes full of nostalgic melodrama. A heartwarming, unforgettable story that is visually well realized.

Captured in the heart of Palombia by Chahuta Indians and sold to exotic animal traffickers, a marsupilami lands in the port of Antwerp in the 1950s. Managing to escape, he arrives in the suburbs of Brussels and is taken in by François, a young boy who is a fan of animals and whose daily life is far from easy. François is picked on by the local kids, particularly because his father had been a German soldier, an unforgivable crime in those postwar years; a fact he and his mother cannot escape. Both are ostracized for their connection to past events. This sometimes dark but always hopeful adventure by renowned author Zidrou and celebrated gallery artist Frank Pe portrays a beautiful friendship between a boy and his beast. The authors pay a superb tribute to the fabulous animal created by Franquin in the series Spirou et Fantasio while denouncing the mistreatment and trafficking of exotic animals. A magnificent adventure whose heart is the extraordinary friendship that can unite a child with an animal.