Follow that monkey!

There are few stories more intriguing to librarians than the stories of how their favorite children's books came to be written. The Curious George books, as most children's librarians know, were written and illustrated by H.A. Rey with help from his partner and wife, Margret Rey. Now the Jewish Museum in New York has created an exhibit based on the story of how the Reys escaped from Europe during World War II and created George as they were on the run. Despite the aura of innocence and naivete which the books exude, they came out of a world of war and terror. George's thoughtless escapades, from which he is always rescued by the Man in the Yellow Hat, have enchanted several generations of children, but the books were written by adults under the threat of concentration camps and death. The Museum exhibit shows letters and part of H.A. Rey's diary, most of which do not reveal much about what the couple was thinking as they fled from Paris to the South of France, then bicycled to Lisbon and managed to get to South America and finally New York. We will probably never know what the authors were thinking as they wrote and drew the pictures for the early books. Perhaps they survived by creating for themselves a world safe from war and death and where the threats of runaway bicycles and all-too-buoyant balloons can always be solved by a helpful hand from the cryptic Man in the Yellow Hat. This exhibit will show in New York until late summer and in the fall will move to the Jewish Museum in San Francisco.