Home

About Homedaddy

Archives

Subscribe

Tell A Newspaper

Contact

Music

Publisher's Area

Curiouws George Revisited

Since becoming a parent, my reading list has taken on a new flavor which owes everything to the merciless invasion of children's books into our home. A notable entry in this category, and today's subject, is "Curious George Visits An Amusement Park."

Many of you are familiar with the Curious George series, in which a mysterious operative known cryptically as "the man with the yellow hat" systematically leads George the monkey through an urban litany of insults and injuries. In each installment, the man abandons George in a situation where a monkey would normally require supervision, leaving George socially and technologically out of his league. Predictably, all you-know-what breaks loose, and only the sudden and annoyingly coincidental reappearance of the man with the yellow hat can restore order.

The books have serious logical inconsistencies, not least of which is that George himself is drawn as a chimp while being described as a monkey. Perhaps his unresolved species-identity issues are at the core of his behavior. Like the rest of the characters, he remains eerily without comment on the fact that "the man in the yellow hat" is actually wearing an entire suit of yellow, including his boots.

In the opening panel of this book, the man with the yellow hat's suggestion to visit an amusement park instantly makes the reader uneasy. The whole setup smacks of disaster. Why take a monkey to an amusement park? George is excited by the idea, but he worships the man with the yellow hat and would be just as happy spending the afternoon trimming nose hairs. The plot gets jump-started just two panels later, when he leaves George alone in front of the ticket booth with a handfull of cash.

At the risk of spoiling the ending, I'll let it slip that George commits breaking and entering, larceny, and resisting arrest. But in a really cute way. Then, via an utterly contrived plot device, George evades his would-be captors long enough to stop and watch the roller coaster at the very moment that his friends, Yvonne and her Aunt Ruby hurtle past with such force that Aunt Ruby loses her purse, enabling George to prove his good citizenship by climbing the roller coaster to retrieve her valuables just as the ticket seller and his gang of angry thugs catch up with him.

Things look bad for George until, as usual, the man with the yellow hat shows up on cue and all the difficulties evaporate. The reader can only imagine him slipping crisp Franklins to the amusement park security guards just beyond the borders of the illustrations.

The underlying message seems to be that the natural curiosity of children leads first to low comedy, then despair, and finally, redemption at the hands of authority. It is a brilliant cautionary tale warning of the dangers of co-dependency. When someone expects too much of you, don't try to meet their expectations. And remember, ignorance is no defense. Every time I read it to Emma, I turn to her every couple of pages and, jerking my thumb towards the book, say "You gettin' all this?"

Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines. Maybe it really is just a story of a man and his monkey out for a good time.

send this column to a friend!
have a comment about this column?

© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.