My Never Ending List

This was an interesting book looking into the lives of the individuals who brought us, Curious George. This book is a biography on the authors and tells us how Curious George came into being, what part the war played on George’s life, and the authors commitment to put their book into the hands of young children.

 

I have always enjoyed Curious George. His antics and his adventures always put a smile on my face. I remember the book where he folded all the newspapers that he was supposed to be delivering and he made boats out of them and then the book where George is scared to go to the dentist, I liked George’s face in that book as it reminds me of how I feel when I visit that scary place.

 

I think George opens up the world to kids, he shows them its okay to be scared, to not know all the answers and its okay to ask questions. He does things that we might perhaps think about doing but don’t act upon. He is our, what if? The world is a huge, evolving place and George helps children navigate inside it. He makes things funny, he calms our fears and being a cute, little monkey helps.

 

As I read this book, I was surprised at the extreme measures the Rey’s took to put George inside a book. The novel begins talking about the couple as they were young children and time moves quickly along. Their dreams, college years, WWI, have the youngsters enjoying their life and doing what they do best: drawing and writing. Working together, they decide to get married and they share their apartment with a pair of marmosets. I am thinking to myself as I read this, how perfect is this? Hans keeps a daily journal as they try to get their projects into the hands of publishers. WWII begins and the couple’s living conditions are unstable. This couple has quite the miles under their belts when they finally find a place that they can call home. It seemed that they were always on the move, their manuscripts and illustrations tucked safely into their bags. Whether they traveling by ship, by train, or by bike, the Rey’s had to travel light but they knew they had someone special inside their bags. The illustrations were bright, cute and whimsical and they went perfectly with the book. It was an education and enlightening read.