Curious George

We read a lot of kids books around here and the other night we hit the first Curious George book written in 1941.

It is very strange... It starts out with this monkey (Curious George) all happy living in the wild in Africa and then along comes "The Man with the Yellow Hat" packing a gun, a camera and some binoculars who lures George into a trap with his hat. Then they take George back to the ship to be taken back to America to spend the rest of his life in his wonderful new home... a ZOO!

Of course Curious George gets into trouble on the way... He goes overboard trying to fly like a seagull... And as he is pulled from the water he appears to vomit seawater with fish. My kids thought that was funny... Fish in the vomit water... Ha Ha! Children really notice everything in the fine details. One of the sailors pulling him out of the water was smoking a pipe much like The Man with the Yellow Hat was two pages before... And then, low and behold, 2 pages after that Curious George is at The Man with the Yellow Hat's house and he eats a good meal and smokes a good pipe (he is in a chair smoking a pipe) and then feels tired... Nothing out of the ordinary there, it was a good pipe.

The next day he ends up in jail for a false fire alarm, but he breaks out of jail with time to steal some balloons which take him for a high ride, but everything is OK as he lands safely and the man with the yellow hat pays for the balloons (we don't want to set a bad example for the kids now do we).

And then Curious George ends up in the ZOO looking happy as a pig in shit because of course that is a GREAT place for a monkey to live.

My daughters questioned if a ZOO is that great for a wild animal to live and look forward to being old enough to smoke their first pipe.