Chris Pine is now a children’s book author

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Actor Chris Pine is telling a different type of story these days.

The “Star Trek” star has a new children’s book out, titled “When Digz the Dog Met Zurl the Squirrel: A Short Tale About a Short Tail.”

“A lot of the impetus for writing, the joy of writing, was thinking about parents reading it, because I remember when I was a kid and fell in love with a book, I’d have my father read it over and over again,” Pine told People magazine.

“Even though I’m not a parent, I can’t tell you how many parents I’ve talked to, and for whatever reason, they are just sick and tired of reading book X for the umpteenth time, so I thought, ‘Well, it would be great to write something that hopefully feels so delicious in the mouth and is so fun to say … that they would want to come back and explore over and over again,’” Pine said. “The story of it is really quite simple, but I think it doesn’t mean that it’s any less important to state the importance of compassion and seeing past judging a book by its cover, so to speak.”

It focuses on a dog names Digz, who believes he is the ruler of a garden and a squirrel, Zurl who disagrees.

The pair soon learn that they have some things in common.

“It was during the first part of [COVID] quarantine, I was out on a walk with a friend, and my dog chased after a squirrel,” Pine said. “My friend was like, ‘I don’t think I know about a story about a dog chasing a squirrel.’ It seems so universal. Doesn’t every dog chase a squirrel? And I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds about right.’”

The star is a dog owner himself and said he “really wanted the book to have that timeless feel, but also the musicality of the language that you’d find in Dr. Seuss.”

“I wanted to write and create something that felt like it had existed already for 50 years,” he said. “It’s a book that’ll be relevant now, it could have been relevant 50 years ago, it’ll be relevant 50 years from now, … and it’s a story that’s very simple, digestible and easy to articulate to young children, and something that hopefully is fun for the parents to read,”

“When Digz the Dog Met Zurl the Squirrel: A Short Tale About a Short Tail” is available now.

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