Margaret and HA Rey were German Jews born near the end of the 19th century. After meeting as teenagers, they both moved to Brazil in the late 1920’s to escape the rise of Nazism. They got married and moved to Paris in 1935, thinking they were safe from the Nazi threat. H.A. Rey built a small career as an illustrator, and was working closely with his beloved Margaret on their own book when the unthinkable happened, and Nazis took Paris. Margaret and HA Rey fled France on bicycles they made themselves carrying only backpacks, with barely one change of clothes, some cash, a few heirlooms and jewelry to sell, and, among these prized, meager possessions – a manuscript for the book they wrote together… ¹

“Curious George“

We read a lot of Curious George in our house, and it’s one of the few historic children’s books where the old ones are still just as beloved as the new adaptations.² The Curious George books are funny, formulaic, silly, simple, and make my children smile and laugh and giggle “Silly Monkey!” in a way that makes me enormously grateful to two faithful people on bicycles who decided this story was worth saving. But since I learned about George’s history, I find myself wondering about the Reys, and the world they lived in, and about the choice to, in the midst of it, write a story about a curious little monkey. I found myself wondering about the people who decided, in the midst of the greatest horror to ever happen to their people, to save a little story about a curious monkey. 

There is something breath-taking about joy in the face of oppression. About curiosity, openness to the world and what it might have to offer you when those around you can only warn you about it. I’ve written about curiosity before, but I think it, like a lot of innovative and creative concepts, gets treated as something you can do when you have time or energy, as emerging from privilege. While curiosity can thrive anywhere, one of its most powerful uses is as a potential response to scarcity. 

Creativity, abundance, and wonder aren’t saved for when everything is figured out, and can actually be the path out of the narrowest hallways. In the original Curious George book (the one carried on a bicycle out of France), George almost drowns, is thrown into jail, and gets whisked into the sky by rogue balloons in the course of a single day! Although his curiosity is often what gets him into trouble, it’s also what always gets him out of it. George can see paths others can’t see, options no one else would notice, and push buttons and pull levers and always finds his way out.

I imagine what George would do in our churches – pulling out all the organ stops, tasting all the communion elements, going for a swim in the baptismal font. Shining flashlights through the stained glass, trying on the robes, and then deciding if there was music and food then all this must be a party. I imagine him gathering the people from the preschool and the AA meeting and the prayer circle (because that’s who’s around) and getting someone to play a song on the organ while the kids shared the bread and juice with all the grown-ups. I imagine hymnals turned to coloring books, and a pastor running in to stop it all,  until he sees everyone playing and singing together, and decides that “George sure had caused a lot of trouble, but he was a good little monkey after all.”³ 

I imagine what a little curiosity could do for us, what a little poking and prodding and experimenting could offer. It’s easy for us to get stuck in a narrative of decline, that we have to protect what we’re going to have because we’re going to lose it. But people fleeing the Nazis on homemade bicycles thought curiosity was worth celebrating, so who are we to think that our times are too bleak for it? Keeping things the same will certainly not save us.

Maybe curiosity will get us into trouble, but maybe, like George, it will get us out of trouble too. 

1. Here’s the full story ↩︎
2. I don’t know if you’ve read any of the original Thomas the Tank Engine, but yikes. ↩︎
3. Curious George and the Puppies (basically every Curious George book has some variation of this sentence. ↩︎