When is the last time you read Curious George? I’m talking about the original here, not any of the recent mass-produced gems “illustrated in the style of H. A. Rey.” Because it is genius.
It wasn’t until I picked up a barely-used copy at Pandemonium last year that I really started to remember it from my own childhood. And the narrative twists that I swallowed unblinkingly as a child now strike me as both wonderful and incredible.
First, George is kidnapped by “the man with the yellow hat” and taken from Africa to New York City via ship. Here the man explains that he will be bringing George to a zoo, but he can go ahead and play for now. “George promised to be good./ But it is easy for little monkeys to forget.” Then, after being fished out of the sea en route, George is brought back to the man’s apartment for the night. “After a good meal/ and a good pipe/ George felt very tired.” And there is a picture of him puffing away on a pipe in a green wingback chair!
Left alone, George phones the fire station the next morning. Put out by the false alarm, “a thin fireman caught one arm/ and a fat fireman caught the other.” “They took him away/ and shut him in a prison.” And there he is, sitting on a narrow bench in a dingy prison cell until he is able to fool the watchman and escape. Just as he is almost in the clear, George’s curiosity gets the better of him again. Trying to make off with one balloon, he accidentally grabs the whole bunch and gets carried off. “Up, up he sailed, higher and higher./ The houses looked like toy houses/ and the people like dolls.” In the end he lands on a traffic light and the man with the yellow hat is able to pay the balloon man and deliver George to the zoo.
Not only is the story itself full of twists and turns, and not only is it really funny as an adult, it is also incredibly charming and well-written. The pacing is just perfect and it is so fun to read aloud. Captivated by the cheerful illustrations — look, there’s George in over-sized pajamas! — children let the words wrap around them.
I don’t care that no children’s book today would ever feature a character smoking. It’s a monkey smoking a pipe; it’s good fun. The firemen aren’t heroes here, either, like they are in every piece of garbage book publishers think they can sell just because boys like fire trucks. That’s okay, though. A little bit of noir, the odd prison cell, does a childhood good. Life isn’t all glitter and sunshine, and kids can learn that’s okay, too. In fact, they will learn that a turn for the worse makes for a better story.
