MOSAIC MOMENTS

I always try to learn something new every day. Sometimes, I search out new things to know about and sometimes it happens by accident. Yesterday was one of those days.

Almost everyone throughout the world knows about the beloved children’s books Curious George. Curious George is the adventures of a very curious monkey who lives with “The Man with the Yellow Hat” and often his curiosity gets him into big trouble.

This book is translated into several languages making “Curious George”  Peter Pedal in Denmark, Nysgjerrige Nils in Norway, Nicke Nyfiken in Sweden, Hitomane Kozaru in Japan, and Jorge El Curioso in Spanish speaking countries.

The series was written and drawn by the team of H.A. Rey and Margret Rey, starting in 1941. According to Hans A. Rey’s obituary in Sky and Telescope, the couple fled Paris in June 1940 with the “Curious George” manuscript in their luggage. A German officer who searched it allowed the couple to pass because he thought it deserved publication, unlikely to happen under Nazi occupation because the Reys were Jewish. At first only Hans A. Rey was credited for the work in order to differentiate the Reys’ books from the large number of children’s books written by female authors. Later, Hans Rey was credited for the illustrations and Margret Rey for the writing. The Reys produced many other children’s books, but the Curious George series was the most popular. It has been re-edited continuously in the six decades since the first volume came out. The current United States publisher is Houghton Mifflin of Boston.

I can just imagine in my mind the Reys’ fleeing Germany with their manuscripts–praying that they would not be taken by the soldiers. It is amazing to me that this soldier let it pass through. I imagine the soldier beginning to read these manuscripts, and being so engrossed with the story, he takes a seat to finish reading. Perhaps he laughs at Curious George’s antics and realizes, that it has been a very long time since he had genuinely laughed. Then, when he is finished, perhaps he thinks about the consequences for letting these papers pass with these Jews. He is taught to hate them and not care at all about their welfare. However, something deep inside him tells him to let the papers pass. He knows it would make a great book. He probably had no idea of the impact on the world he had made by letting those papers pass.

Another extremely interesting fact about Curious George that I did not know is that the story Curious George Takes a Job was based on a young man with Down syndrome!

According to Answers.com….”the book Curious George Takes a Job was inspired by a true story. A boy, whose name is not known today, was born in Hamburg in 1909 with Down’s Syndrome. He was institutionalized by his parents, condemned to a life at the facility.

When the boy was 15, he escaped from the institution and fled into the city streets. Hungry and in search of food, he found the briefly unattended kitchen of a restaurant, where a cook found him playing with the food and eating it. The cook, intrigued, put him to work to clean dishes, and took him home that evening. Within the following days, the cook arranged with a friend to have the boy wash windows at an office building.

The boy’s work went well at first. But in one office, he found colored paints. He used them to paint a mural on the wall of the office. The tenant returned to his office after a lunch break to find the boy busy painting, and he started to chase after him. The boy jumped out a third-story window, breaking some bones.

The story made local headlines. After several weeks of hospitalization, the boy was formally adopted by the cook, and he later became the star of an amateur movie. He was recognized in the coming years as a talented artist. Some of his artwork was sold by the renowned bookseller, A.S.W. Rosenbach.

While his identity, art, and other details of his life were lost in the ravages of World War II, he is believed to have been put to death by the government of Nazi Germany.

Imagine the way things were way back then. This child was condemed to an institution for life! The restaurant owner could have easily sent him back to the institution. Or, he could have kept him to make him work. That way, he wouldn’t have to pay for the help he needed. Instead…he adopted him! Things like this just didn’t happen back then. And, not only did he adopt him, he saw his true talents and didn’t deny him of those talents just because he had Down syndrome. I wonder if this man had a Yellow Hat? Yellow is the sign of joy and happiness…. I imagine that he must have worn one every day even in the dissolution of the war!

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