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Curious George is the chimpanzee protagonist and main character from a series of popular children's books by the same name, written by Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey. The books feature a curious chimpanzee named George, who is brought from his home in Africa by "The Man with the Yellow Hat" to live with him in a big city.

Contents 1 Creation 2 Series 2.1 Curious George books 3 Curious George Takes a Job 4 Interpretations 4.1 Kidnapping? 5 Other media 6 Curious George & Vivendi Universal 7 External links

The series was written and drawn by the husband and wife team of H.A. Rey and Margret Rey, starting in 1941. At first only Hans 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.

The Curious George books have been segmented by Houghton Mifflin into a few categories: classic favorites, board books, and new adventures. Classic favorites include the original seven books, all written and illustrated by the Reys. Board books are stories and books designed specifically for small children. New adventures include books by the Reys that were either original stories or adapted from the filmstrip series, as well as new books "illustrated in the style of H. A. Rey" by Vipah Interactive and later by Martha Weston. Around the world, the adventures of Curious George have been translated in many languages, and George takes on names such as Peter Pedal in Denmark, Nysgjerrige Nils in Norway, Nicke Nyfiken in Sweden, Hitomane Kozaru in Japan, and Jorge El Curioso in Spanish speaking countries. A new TV series, based on the book and the movie, debuted September 4, 2006 on PBS Kids as part of Miss Lori and Hooper's schedule block.

• Curious George (1941)
• Curious George Takes a Job (1947)
• Curious George Rides a Bike (1952)
• Curious George Gets a Medal (1957)
• Curious George Flies a Kite (1958)
• Curious George Learns the Alphabet (1963)
• Curious George Goes to the Hospital (1966)

As stated in an interview, 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.

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.

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George can be seen as part-human, part-ape - he is a simian, but he has no tail. Although chimpanzees lack tails, they also walk on their knuckles. So what kind of ape is George? In "Curious George Finds A Job", George escapes from the zoo then proceeds to take on a series of menial jobs. The man in the yellow hat dresses in a style akin to that of colonial masters, and George is supposed to operate under his direction. But George is "just too curious" to do what the man in the yellow hat tells him.

This depiction of the man with the yellow hat has also been interpreted as a reference to the figure of "The Man," which was popularized by the black counterculture of the Civil Rights Movement, and which later leaked into rock 'n' roll and its subsidiaries (punk rock, alternative, new wave, etc.).

On an allegorical level, it has been argued that when George lives in Africa, his life is simple and carefree, and thus representative of the womb; the man in the yellow hat is a kindly, but stern paternal figure who takes him from this place and into the real world: the big city is the place where we all grow up.

Another view sees the man in the yellow hat as representing colonialism, his kidnapping of George as slavery, and George's curiosity as just another in a slew of mainstream representations of people of color and lower class people as disobedient, disruptive, ill-behaved, and rebellious. Such representations are riddled with bourgeois values and serve the "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" (a phrase used by popular critic of race representations Bell Hooks).

Some [1] [2] argue that George is kidnapped by The Man in the Yellow Hat. From the first book:

"What a nice little monkey," the man thought. "I would like to take him home with me." He put his hat on the ground and, of course, George was curious. He came down from the tree to look at the large yellow hat... George picked it up and put it on.

The hat covered George's head. He couldn't see. The man picked him up quickly and popped him into a bag. George was caught.

The picture accompanying this text depicts George in a sack, only his head visible, with a very surprised look on his face.

The man with the big yellow hat put George into a little boat, and a sailor rowed them both across the water to a big ship. George was sad, but he was still a bit curious.

In the illustration accompanying this text, George seems quite happy as he looks at a couple of passing fish; in his essay "Frightened George: How the Pediatric Educational Complex Ruined the Curious George Series" (Journal of Social History - Volume 39, Number 1, Fall 2005, pp. 221-228), Daniel Greenstone finds George's "kidnapping and imprisonment striking... because of the monkey's nonchalant response".

Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat make appearances at Universal Studios Florida.

Also at Universal Studios Florida is the kids' playland "Curious George Goes to Town". It has two areas: An outside wet playground with water jets, water guns, and giant buckets that empty their contents on guests below, and an indoor playground called the "Ball Factory" where guests can launch soft foam balls at each other or provided targets; Guests are provided with many opportunities to launch balls with various cannons or even fill large buckets above the area, which dump their contents every two and half minutes.

There was a series of animated TV films made (beginning in 1980) featuring the character, which were then adapted into books themselves (making up part of the New Adventures series listed above). This series was produced and co-written by Alan Shalleck.

There has been a stop-motion adaptation of two Curious George stories, created with puppet-figures by noted animator John Clark Matthews (who also used a similar technique for his film of Frog and Toad Together).

An animated film, Curious George, featuring Will Ferrell as Ted (also known as "the man with the yellow hat"), was released on February 10, 2006. In this film, Curious George secretly follows the man onto the ship to the city on his own accord.

There is also a Curious George video game that was released on February 2, 2006, published by Namco and developed by Monkey Bar Games, a division of Vicious Cycle Software.

The Curious George brand recently (mid-2006) joined with Welch's jelly for a collectible of six jars.

A children's bookstore in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is known as Curious George (formerly Curious George Goes To Wordsworth), and carries a considerable amount of licensed Curious George merchandise. It is the last remaining property of Wordsworth Books, a former local general-interest bookstore that closed in the early 2000s.

In 2001, when Jean-Marie Messier served as CEO of French media giant Vivendi Universal, he seized upon Curious George (a character of Houghton Mifflin Company, part of VU) as a perfect embodiment of the sprawling conglomerate's various activities, which reached as far afield as the French mobile phone operator Cegetel (Messier was an early proponent of entertainment downloads via mobile phones.) Waxing enthusiastic as he met with investors and the media, Messier couldn't resist talking up George.

Although never officially raised to the status of mascot, George did audition for the part in full-page ads that Vivendi Universal ran in the pages of such papers as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times during summer 2001.

"Wherever there's a curious mind to feed and imagination to inspire, you'll be seeing Vivendi Universal", the ads, featuring George's image, read.

But Messier's own reign proved short-lived. In 2000, Vivendi, the Paris-based utilities company, had merged with Seagram Co., which then owned Universal Studios, and Canal+ to create Vivendi Universal. But by 2002, Messier resigned under pressure, and in 2004, Vivendi Universal Entertainment merged with NBC to form NBC Universal.

• Houghton Mifflin's listing of Curious George products
• Complete Catalog of Curious George Products

Curious George
Media: Film | TV Series | Video Game Creators: H. A. Rey | Margret Rey