Still curious after all these years Tales of a mischievous monkey delight children for six decades

Whether he is called Nicke, Coco, Bingo or George, he is sure to be in big trouble before the story ends. He really is not a bad little monkey, he’s just very curious – a trait that’s delighted children around the world, and their parents, for more than 60 years.

Children in Hancock County are joining in the birthday celebration for Curious George, the mischievous monkey who unintentionally creates chaos for the Man in the Yellow Hat. Houghton Mifflin, publisher of the Curious George books, gave 240 hardcover copies of the books, written by Margret and H.A. Rey, to the Hancock County Children’s Council.

That group distributed them to eight schools as well as the Emmaus Center in Ellsworth, the HCCC’s library and the Women Infant and Children’s program libraries in Washington and Hancock counties. HCCC obtained the books, valued at $1,908, through Downeast Books for Kids, a new program sponsored by Downeast Health.

Houghton Mifflin, the Boston-based company that published the first Curious George book more than 60 years ago, gave away thousands of books as part of George’s 60th birthday celebration. Organizations like HCCC applied through the publisher for the books, which arrived earlier this month. The publisher’s only restriction was that the books had to go into permanent lending collections.

“Curious George is looking good. He looks better now than he did when I was a kid,” joked Lucy Barnhart, coordinator of the Downeast Books for Kids program and family literary coordinator for HCCC. “The books have glossy covers now and a little bit more color inside. But what matters is that everybody still loves him, no matter how old he is.”

To mark George’s birthday, Houghton Mifflin last year published the seven original stories about the inquisitive primate’s adventures in “The Complete Adventures of Curious George: 60th Anniversary Edition.” The curious monkey’s birthday festivities include a national touring exhibit “Celebrating 60 Years of Curious George: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey,” which will be at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan through February.

The adventures of George and his owner, the Man in the Yellow Hat, pale in comparison to the real-life stories of their creators, the Reys. The husband and wife collaborated on at least eight books, and each wrote books on their own. For the most part, he was in charge of the ideas and the illustrations, while she handled the plot and the writing.

Hans Augusto Reyersbach and Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein were born in Hamburg, Germany, eight years apart. They met when he was dating her older sister. He first laid eyes on his future bride and literary partner as she slid down a banister.

He shortened his name to Rey in 1924 when he moved to Brazil to work in a family business selling bathtubs and kitchen sinks. She met him again in Rio de Janeiro after studying art and becoming a professional photographer in Germany.

The couple married on Aug. 16, 1935, and opened the first advertising agency in Rio. For their honeymoon, they went to Paris, fell in love with the city and stayed four years. Rey published his first children’s book there after a French publisher saw his newspaper cartoons of a giraffe and asked him to expand on them.

“Ragi et les 9 singes” or “Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys” marked the debut of the mischievous monkey who would become familiar to millions as Curious George. During the late 1930s, the Reys worked on the manuscript for the first Curious George book, but as the Nazis marched toward Paris, the couple, both German Jews, knew they must leave the city they’d come to love.

Hans Rey cobbled together two bicycles out of spare parts and early on the morning of June 14, 1940, they set off with warm coats, a bit of food and five manuscripts including the one about a mischievous monkey. For four long days they road toward Spain. When the couple reached the border, they sold their bicycles for train fare to Lisbon, then made their way to Rio and on to New York City. The Nazis took control of Paris four hours after the couple fled the city.

Houghton Mifflin published “Curious George” in October 1941 as part of a four-book contract with the Boston-based firm. Two months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. While publishing children’s books was not a priority during the war years, the sale of Curious George books took off in the late 1950s.

The couple wrote “Curious George Goes to the Hospital” at the request of officials at Boston Children’s Hospital, who wanted a book to prepare children for a hospital stay. While many books on the subject are in print today, George was one of the first “literary” figures to undergo surgery. He also got his own spacesuit in “Curious George Earns a Medal.” Other books in the series written by the Reys include “Curious George Flies a Kite,” “Curious George Rides a Bike,” “Curious George Takes a Job,” and “Curious George Learns the Alphabet.”

Tracey O’Connell, a counselor at the Airline School in Aurora, grew up reading Curious George books. She said that the 49-pupil school that serves children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, has been working recently to improve its library with the help of HCCC programs and the Briarpatch, a children’s bookstore in Bangor.

“This library thing has boomed for us,” she said. “Now, we have every Curious George book there is. They are very colorful and I’m sure the children will love them like I did and my kids did.

“What always amazed us was that he swallowed that puzzle piece,” she said, referring to the incident that sent the monkey to the hospital.

After 60 years, the adventures of Curious George still are delighting and amazing children around the world.

“Kids still like him,” said Sara Hessler, librarian at the Dr. Charles Knowlton School in Ellsworth. “Even though the Reys aren’t writing the books any more, [the publishers] have kept that formula that’s popular with beginning readers.”

Hessler said that the new books already have been checked out by some of the 215 pupils at the kindergarten through second grade school. The school received two copies each of eight of the newer titles, most of which it did not have.

The librarian speculated that the monkey has remained popular for so many years because George is “a naughty monkey and children like to read about his mischief and the fact that things turn out all right in the end.”