But George survives being captured, trapped in a brown sack, and being exiled from his home in Africa, and he ultimately adapts to his new country and his new life. He becomes fully integrated into the great American “melting pot” as he takes a job, goes to Hollywood, visits the circus, goes to the hospital, and even becomes the first animal in space, beating Laika – the Russian cosmonaut dog who blasted off into space on Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957 – by mere weeks.
Similarly, Hans and Margret were refugees from the Nazis who adapted to their new lives as American citizens. According to some commentators, the yellow hat worn by George’s abductor could be a reference to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear under the Nazi regime. Additionally, in the original Curious George book, the Man with the Yellow Hat helps George get all his identification papers in order, in contrast to the Reys’ struggle to secure the necessary papers to leave France.
Thus, the great poignancy and irony of the Curious George stories is that while its creators crafted a child’s fictional world of hopefulness, innocence, and resolute cheerfulness, readers did not know that the true underlying story is one of a dramatic escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust and a tale of Jewish survival.
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George remains one of the most beloved and recognized characters in all of children’s literature. The first Curious George book, published in 1941, has been translated into more than fourteen languages, including Yiddish and Hebrew, and in 2007 a rare first edition of that book sold at auction for $21,850.
The original seven George books by Hans and Margret, together with the 28 sequels Margret wrote with the late Alan J. Shalleck after Hans’s death, have sold about 30 million copies.
George has also been featured in a Public Service campaign in conjunction with the Ad Council and the Library of Congress; was inducted into the Indie Choice Book Awards Picture Book Hall of Fame; and has starred in an Emmy-Award winning PBS television series and in at least three full-length films.
In all, the Reys authored and illustrated more than 30 books, most of them for children, which have never been out of print for 70 years and have sold over 30 million copies. Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World wasn’t published until 2000, when the manuscript was rediscovered in the Rey archives and published posthumously.
Though the Reys are best known for Curious George, they also published many other stories, including a few that were well ahead of their time in addressing racial matters and advocating for ethnic harmony, which undoubtedly grew out of their own Holocaust experience.
For example, in Zebrology (1937), an adult book, the Reys humorously trace the evolution of the zebra from both white and black horses. Arguing that people can be different and still live together in harmony, the book humorously ponders: “Is the zebra white with black stripes, or black with white stripes?”
Similarly, the Reys address the issue of discrimination in Spotty (1945), the story of a rabbit snubbed by friends and family because of his unusual spotted fur. The book, which was praised by the Anti-Defamation League, was translated into German as a teaching tool for the “re-education” program in Germany instituted by the U.S. Army after World War II.
Hans also combined his interests in stargazing and drawing in two books about astronomy: The Stars: A New Way to See Them (1952), written for adults, and Find the Constellations (1954), a children’s version. Other children’s books by the Reys include Don’t Frighten the Lion (1942), in which a resourceful poodle in girls’ clothes tours the zoo, and Elizabite – The Adventures of a Carnivorous Plant (1942), in which all attempts to prevent the hungry plant from filling his stomach’s desires fail.
