The Original Curious George
A reissue of the first Curious George story with H.A. Rey's original watercolor illustrations.
Once upon a time, the hat worn by the man in the yellow hat was not so eye-poppingly yellow. Now, more than 50 years after Curious George was first published, readers can finally see the original watercolors Rey intended to accompany his story about an incorrigible but loveable monkey.
In 1940, H.A. and Margaret Rey fled Paris on bicycles just hours before the Germans invaded. They carried only their winter coats and drafts of four picture books. One of these, Fifi, was published in the United States the next year under a new name suggested by the publisher--Curious George.
The illustrations were also new. The publisher, Houghton Mifflin, did not want to pay for photolithography--the printing process needed to reproduce watercolor--because Rey was unknown and the book might not sell. Instead, Rey had to recreate his artwork as cheaper "separations"--drawings that used just one color of printer's ink: black, yellow, magenta (red), or cyan (blue). That means he had to do four drawings for each illustration that appeared in the book!
The text of The Original Curious George is identical to the more famous version, and the drawings are very similar. On a few pages, Rey made revisions--George's bed faces a different direction in the original, for example. But the main difference is the intensity of the color. Though bright, Rey's watercolors have a softness and subtlety that pre-separated artwork can never achieve.
The book is billed as a "collector's edition," probably intended for former children rather than current ones. But there's no reason why youngsters wouldn't love Rey's original George--or perhaps we should call him Fifi?
