The Complete Adventures of Curious George (36 page)

LES DÉCOUPAGES REY

LE ZOO

Le Zoo,
another toy book created by Rey, was published in 1938 by Hachette in France. Since its design was unique, it was protected by a patent rather than the traditional copyright.

Pretzel

Pretzel
was the first book on which Margret Rey's name appeared as author. She often provided ideas and edited the text and illustrations created by her husband, but this was the first time that she actually received credit for her creativity. In the concluding pages of the story, Pretzel finally captures the heart of Greta; they marry and have a litter of five puppies. The sequel,
Pretzel and the Puppies,
consists of a series of two-page stories presented in a picture strip format similar to that of a comic strip. These short stories also appeared in
Good Housekeeping
magazine in the late 1940s. A balloon replica of Pretzel was featured in a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Katy No-Pocket

What is a kangaroo to do when she has a baby but no pocket? Author Emmy Payne teamed up with illustrator H. A. Rey to provide an exceptional solution to the problem in
Katy No-Pocket
(1944). Rey explained his creative process for
Katy No-Pocket
in the Junior Literary Guild's monthly magazine for its young readers,
Young Wings:
"When I have an idea that seems to me just right for a book, I make sketches and jot down a few words and show them to the boys and girls who are my friends. They tell me what they think and give me very useful suggestions. This showing of my book-in-the-making to my small friends is quite a necessary test, for I am usually so fond of my own ideas that I want to put everything into the book."

Billys Picture

Billys Picture
was published by Harper and Brothers in 1948 and was so popular that it was reprinted in Danish, Swedish, German, and Japanese. Despite this worldwide acceptance, the United States sales began to sag in the late 1960
S
. Upon receiving a royalty statement in 1966, the Reys thought
Billy's Picture
must be out of print because the sum was so small! Following the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, H. A. wrote a letter to Ursula Nordstrom at Harper, asking about the book's status. On the letter was a drawing of a tombstone reading "Here Lies Billy, 1948—1965, R.I.P.," with a reclining rabbit in the grass. At the Reys' insistence, Billy was resuscitated with a reprinting of the book using a different color scheme.

The Stars

H. A. Rey was so intensely interested in astronomy that he took a star guide along with him when he served as a German soldier in World War I. He found most guides impossible to interpret and vowed someday to create a more understandable method of constellation recognition. That he did in 1952 with the publication of
The Stars: A New Way to See Them,
the work of which was triggered by the design of the Reys' 1947 New Year's card, which featured a constellation motif. H. A. spent more than four years creating
The Stars,
an immediate best-seller. It has since become the definitive star-watching guide, popular with laymen and professionals alike, and is still in print. Many adults who know nothing of
Curious George
are very familiar with H. A. Rey's name because of
The Stars.
He later published a children's version entitled
Find the Constellations.

Curious George Sequels

After the publication of
Curious George
in 1941, fans had to wait another six years before more adventures of the mischievous monkey appeared in
Curious George Takes a Job.
The Reys often made cameo appearances in their books—in this second title of the series, on page 13, one can find Margret with her dog and H. A. with a friend promenading on Fifth Avenue. The third title,
Curious George Rides a Bike,
was published in 1952. In this series of misadventures, George "sets off on his new bicycle to deliver newspapers, ...builds a whole navy of paper boats, lands in a traveling circus, ...gets an ostrich into trouble, and rescues a runaway bear."

In the fourth title,
Curious George Gets a Medal,
published in 1957, George goes up in a spaceship and receives a medal for his bravery. Two years later, the United States launched a squirrel monkey named Gordo into space aboard
Jupiter AM-13.
Gordo was followed in 1959 by Able and Baker, who rode in a nose cone to an altitude of 300 miles and a distance of 1,500 miles. It seemed clear to Margret Rey that their fictional story had inspired the actual events.

Since it was issued as part of a beginning-reader series,
Curious George Flies a Kite
was written with a restricted vocabulary of only 219 words. According to author Margret Rey, "It was a fad then, and many educators thought first-graders could learn to read quicker that way. Like so many things, it proved to be nonsense and was given up after a while. Luckily, children never noticed that this book was written differently from the other Curious George books."

Margret recalled some difficulty in preparing the British edition of
Curious George Learns the Alphabet.
"You might think the British use the same alphabet as we do. Far from it! Several pictures had to be changed.... No 'Xmas' there, no 'mailman' (it is 'postman' in England), no 'quarterback,' no 'truck' (it is 'lorry' in England), and so on. So we had to find substitutes."

He got off the bicycle, took a newspaper out of the bag and began to fold it.

First he folded down the corners, like this—

The small t

is a turtle.
You can keep turtles in a tub as pets, they
get quite tame. If you tease a turtle he pulls
his head and feet and tail into his shell.

The final
Curious George
book written during H. A. Rey's lifetime is
Curious George Goes to the Hospital.
The story line was suggested to the couple by administrators of Children's Hospital in Boston. They wanted a book to prepare children for their first visit to a hospital. The Reys derived a great deal of satisfaction from this book, since many mothers wrote to tell them how effective it was in reducing their child's trauma.

Whiteblack the Penguin

"Whiteblack the Penguin," never published in the Reys' lifetime, has vibrant full-color illustrations and is complete with beautifully hand-lettered text. According to correspondence in the archive, it was submitted for publication to Ursula Nordstrom of Harper and Brothers. In a letter dated October 27, 1942, Nordstrom commented, "I think Whiteblack can be shortened, sharpened, and improved. I hope you will let me see it again." There is no written evidence that the manuscript was resubmitted. It remained in the Reys' possession and was transferred to the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, where the entire Rey archive is housed. There, in the fall of 1999, Anita Silvey, publisher of children's books at Houghton Mifflin, discovered the manuscript.
Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World
was finally published in 2000.

New Year's Cards

The Reys had a tradition of designing and producing an original card each year to mail to family and friends. They used the cards to inform people of a new address, to comment on the world political situation, or to showcase an imaginative idea.

Lucky Stars for 1941!
Margret & H. A. Rey

Waterville Valley

Although very much at home in their Greenwich Village apartment, the Reys wanted to spend summers in the country, where Margret could garden and H. A. could have a clear view of the heavens. On May 14, 1958, construction began on the Curious George Cottage in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. Here they spent relaxing summers and drew inspiration from their bucolic existence there. H. A. was well known for rescuing injured animals and nursing them back to health. Coffee, an orphaned chipmunk whom H. A. had hand-fed with an eyedropper and returned to the wild, came back each summer to visit his human friends. Another benefactor of H. A.'s tender care was George the squirrel, whose watercolor image drawn by Rey is shown above.