The Complete Adventures of Curious George (35 page)

The End

Retrospective Essay

by Dee Jones
WITH A
P
HOTOGRAPHIC
A
LBUM OF
M
ARGRET AND
H. A. Re
Y

Early Life

Both Hans and Margret Rey were born in Hamburg, Germany—Hans Augusto Reyersbach on September 16, 1898, and Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein on May 16, 1906. Hans received an old-style humanistic education and studied Latin, Greek, French, and English. Although art was not a part of his studies, he loved to draw and did so from a very young age. A drawing of horses in the park was done when he was just eight years old.

Hans, better known by his initials, H. A., served in the German army during World War I and was stationed in France and Russia. In the early 1920s, H. A. and Margret met at a party at her parents' house in Hamburg. He was dating her older sister at the time, and when he first saw Margret she was sliding down the banister.

In 1924, due to the increasing inflation in Germany, H. A. moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to work as an accountant in his brother-in-law's import-export firm. Among other duties, he sold bathtubs and kitchen sinks up and down the Amazon River for twelve years. The surname of "Rey" was adopted by H. A. when the Brazilians began to address him using the shortened form of his tongue-twister name.

Meanwhile, Margret was still in Germany, where she received formal art training at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927, when Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky were on the faculty. She also studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts from 1928 to 1929 and held one-artist shows of her art in Berlin in the early 1930s. Margret worked for a British advertising agency in Berlin, where she wrote the lyrics to the first jingle for a radio commercial for Lever Brothers margarine. She also worked as a professional photographer in Berlin and London before moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1935.

Advertising Art

Upon arriving in Rio, Margret became reacquainted with H. A. Rey and persuaded him to leave his brother-in-law's firm. Together they founded the first advertising agency in Rio de Janeiro. They were married on August 16, 1935. They created stories for newspapers and magazines with Margret's writing and H. A.'s illustrations. Margret also continued her photography, and H. A. found steady work with Hoffmann—La Roche, a pharmaceutical firm. He produced many of their direct mail advertising campaigns, utilizing witty illustrations. He also drew maps and posters, illustrated cookbooks, and designed Christmas cards for corporate clients.

Apre's la barbe, le virage en feu?

XYRENE

after shaving lotion

Early Books

Margret and H. A. took a belated honeymoon trip to Europe, and their planned two-week stay in Paris turned into four years. During that happy time, H. A. began to write and illustrate books.
Zebrology,
published by Grace Hogarth at Chatto & Windus in London in 1937, is Rey's first title in English, although not a children's book.
How the Flying Fish Came into Being,
a wordless book consisting of eight illustrated panels, followed in 1938. That year also saw the publication of
Le Zoo
and
Le Cirque,
toy books complete with paper animals to punch out and assemble. An editor at Gallimard saw Rey's whimsical drawings of a giraffe in a French periodical and suggested that he make them into a children's book. Thus was born
Raft et les 9 Singes,
published in 1939. An English-language version was also published the same year by Chatto & Windus as
Raffy and the 9 Monkeys.
Raffy's name was changed to Cecily G. (G. for giraffe, of course) in the subsequent American edition. French children loved the antics of one of the nine monkeys named "Fifi" and begged for more stories about him. Fifi was soon renamed "George" and went on to fame and fortune in his own series of books.

H. A. REY

Rafi et les 9 singes

nrf

Curious George

In June 1940, on a rainy morning before dawn, the Reys left Paris on bicycles just hours before the Nazis entered the city. They took only warm coats and their manuscripts and artwork—among the stories was
Curious George.
After selling their bicycles at the French-Spanish border, they went by train to Lisbon, on to Rio de Janeiro, and finally arrived in New York City in October 1940. Grace Hogarth, who had published their books at Chatto & Windus and was now at Houghton Mifflin, soon acquired
Curious George,
which was published in 1941.
Curious George
slowly became a classic throughout the world, and editions have appeared in every possible language, with George renamed "Zozo," "Bingo," "Nicke," "Coco," and "Piete," among others.

Music Books

In the early 1940s, H. A. Rey began a series of delightful music books, utilizing traditional French children's songs, Mother Goose rhymes, and Christmas carols. They are
Au Clair de la Lune
(Greystone, 1941),
Humpty Dumpty and Other Mother Goose Songs
(Harper, 1943),
We Three Kings
(Harper, 1944), and
Mary Had a Little Lamb and Other Nursery Songs
(Puffin, 1949). Rey's creativity is evident in these books, in which he replaced the traditional designation of whole, half, quarter, and eighth musical notes with a symbol pertinent to the song.

O little Town of Bethlehem

Books Written by Others

Although H. A. and Margret Rey almost always wrote and illustrated their books together, H. A. illustrated several books for other authors that were published by Harper and Brothers during the 1940s. Rey was fortunate to work with legendary editor Ursula Nordstrom, and together they created several original books.
Goodnight Moon
author Margaret Wise Brown collaborated with Rey on two books,
The Polite Penguin
in 1941 and
Don't Frighten the Lion
in 1942. Other collaborations, all published in 1944, included
Katy No-Pocket,
by Emmy Payne;
Egbert and His Marvelous Adventures,
by Paul T. Gilbert; and
The Park Book,
by Charlotte Zolotow.
Don't Frighten the Lion
was originally titled "Monkey Business," but the title was changed because Rey had promised his editors at Houghton Mifflin that he would not create books with other publishing firms that would directly compete with their Curious George books. A paper doll and clothing designed by Rey were printed inside the front cover of
Don't Frighten the Lion.

Elizabite

Another early H. A. Rey title edited by Ursula Nordstrom is
Elizabite,
published in 1942. Rey's delightful sense of humor takes center stage in this book about a carnivorous plant. From the jacket flap copy comes the following description: "When asked about the origin of
Elizabite,
Mr. Rey (who has spent many years in Brazil) told of an evening in Rio when he was dining with friends, among them a botanist who entertained the party with strange tales about carnivorous plants. Ever since, Mr. Rey has looked with suspicion at flower arrangements on dinner tables, and, as the years went by, he often tried to imagine what a carnivorous plant might develop into, under proper care. His thoughts on the subject crystallized into the colorful and energetic shape of Elizabite in the present book."

Tit for Tat

Tit for Tat
is an inventive turnabout tale of what would happen if animals did unto us as we do unto them. It was a hit with children and adults alike, as evidenced by the following quotations. From a letter to the Reys from editor Ursula Nordstrom we learn, "The salesmen are all in happy hysterics over
Tit for Tat,
and so is everyone who has seen the original dummy—the man at
Publishers Weekly,
for instance." A review in the December 1943
Junior Reviewers
relates that "a kindergarten group greeted this with screams of laughter, and you could see the enjoyable visions it started in the darling little heads, such as one comment, 'Oh boy, if I could only play tit for tat with my father!'"

Toy Books

At the same time that Harper and Brothers was publishing
Elizabite
and
Tit for Tat,
Houghton Mifflin was busy with several "cut-out-and-play" books created by Uncle Gus. Uncle Gus was, of course, Hans AuGUSto Rey, and his
Christmas Manger, Uncle Gus's Circus,
and
Uncle Gus's Farm,
all published in 1942, were instant successes. A May 3, 1942, piece in the
New York Times Book Review
comments, "The elephants and monkeys and clowns of
Uncle Gus's Circus,
the pigs and horses and cows ... of
Uncle Gus's Farm
will push out of the page ... all ready to stand up when folded.... These ingenious books have real charm and will provide solid enjoyment and relief for both children and parents on a long train journey or when a child is ill enough to stay in bed but not too ill to be amused."