George

Back when The Short Bus and I ran together, we spent a lot of time watching Curious George (for some reason, my favorite was always the one with the candy counter); even now if I'm flipping around I land on it sometimes, briefly becoming awash with nostalgia over our days together.

Hard to believe the original George came so close to succumbing to the Nazis.

With the Nazi invasion imminent, the couple fled from Paris to the south of France in 1940 to focus on Fifi in a makeshift studio in a castle tower. But after gendarmes grew suspicious of their practices, they sent inspectors to investigate. When they discovered the children’s drawings instead of the anticipated bombs, they left the Jewish couple alone. Curious George aptly saved the day and the Reys were eventually able to make their four-month journey across France, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, before finally arriving in New York in October of that same year....The couple’s story of narrow escape soon became a thread throughout the adventures and misadventures of Curious George, with the monkey always redeeming himself of his roguish ways by the book’s end. With scenes of smiling faces of humans and monkeys alike, it’s difficult to image the hands that drew them may have been quivering with fear of Nazi takeover. “The palette is so vivid, the colors are so cheerful,” says Jewish Museum curator Claudia Nahson of the Reys’ work. “It’s such a sharp contrast to what they were experiencing at the time.”