CURIOUS GEORGE:
THE MOST POPULAR MONKEY IN KID'S LITERATURE
Before you see the movie, read about the true-life adventure story behind the books.
There's a fascinating story behind the story. Bob Minzesheimer interviewed Louise Borden, who wrote a book about the real-life, war-time adventures of the authors who wrote the Curious George stories:
The best adventures grow out of a little curiosity.
Just ask Louise Borden, whose curiosity about the story behind the story of Curious George, the most popular monkey in children's literature, led her on a decade-long journey through the past.
In 1995, Borden read a brief reference in Publishers Weekly about how Margret and H.A. Rey, German Jews who created Curious George, fled in June 1940 from the Nazis advancing on Paris.
In an exodus of millions, the Reys got away on bicycles he built from spare parts. In a basket covered by a coat, they carried the manuscript of what would become the children's classic.
First published in 1941, Curious George stories have sold 30 million copies and have been turned into an animated movie and public TV series..
Borden, a children's author in Cincinnati, was fascinated by the wartime story. "I was curious," she says, "just like the Reys' little monkey." But she found few details about the escape of H.A. Rey, who died in 1977, and his wife, who died in 1996.
Borden's research, a "kind of detective story," lead her to Paris, Gascogne and finally the remote French chateau where, unbe-knownst to its current owners, Curious George was written.
(George initially was named Fifi, but American editors decided the name was too feminine for a male monkey.)
Borden's children's book, The Journey that Saved Curious George ( illustrated by Allan Drummond), was celebrated last year at the Rey Children's Room at the Boston Public Library.
A decade ago, Borden wasn't sure she had a book.
Then she learned that the couple saved everything they wrote, including H.A. Rey's daily journal, and it had survived the war. Their luggage, which had been left in Paris, was mysteriously shipped to them a year later, after they moved to New York.
About 300 boxes of their papers are at the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi.
(Borden says she has heard that the collection was not damaged by Hurricane Katrina.)
After reading the Reys' letters, manuscripts and hotel bills, Borden told herself, "I think I can crack this."
She ended up retracing the 66 miles the couple rode on bicycle from Paris to Orleans. "I didn't bicycle, but I once spent three days on a bike in Holland, so I knew what it's like," she says.
After the husband and wife settled in New York, they wrote seven Curious George books. Margret shares credit on only two of them, but Borden says H.A. Rey called his wife a true collaborator. He drew the pictures; she helped with the story lines.
Borden's book resembles a scrapbook with reproductions of documents, letters and artwork.
"It looks like the research on my desk," she says. "That's how I found the bits and pieces of the story."
For more about author Louise Borden, whose latest book for kids is "Across the Blue Pacific" about World War II, visit her website: www.louiseborden.com