Anyone who has ever read Margret and H. A. Rey’s picture books about Curious George knows that Curious George is always on the move. In Curious George Gets a Medal, he even takes a rocket trip to space for which he is awarded a medal that reads, “To George, the First Space Monkey.” The book about Curious George’s space flight came out in 1957, but Curious George hasn’t slowed down a bit since then. He is still on the move, and he recently landed in Charlotte.
This summer ImaginOn is hosting an interactive exhibit called “Curious George: Let’s Get Curious.” The exhibit will remain at ImaginOn until August 23, 2025. Like George, I am curious about new things, so I recently visited the exhibit. Becca Worthington, the head Children’s Librarian at ImaginOn, gave me a tour of the exhibit. I didn’t wear a yellow hat, but I did have a yellow legal pad, which I used to take notes. Becca informed me that every year ImaginOn rents an exhibit from a children’s museum. The Minnesota Children’s Museum created this exhibit in 2007, and ever since then it has been touring the country.
The exhibit features a series of activity stations related to scenes from the books. One of these stations is based on the apartment building that is depicted in Curious George Takes a Job in which George gets a job washing the building’s windows. Children can operate wheels that move George on pulleys from one window to another. Becca offered to let me have a go at operating the wheels, but I contented myself with watching a girl intently move George around the building. Another station features a replica of George’s space rocket. Children can have their pictures taken standing next to George in his space suit. I saw lots of children posing for pictures, and I even saw one mother getting her picture taken with George. Other stations include a sidewalk produce stand, where children can sort and weigh different types of fruits and vegetables, and a construction site, where children use various machines to move building materials.
My favorite station is called the “Museum within the Museum.” Intended more for the grownup visitors, this station provides information about Margret and H. A. Rey and their perilous escape from Paris just before the Nazis invaded the city. As Jews, they knew they needed to flee Paris to avoid persecution at the hands of the Nazis. This station includes displays detailing how they moved from Paris to Bayonne, France, to Lisbon, Portugal, to Brazil, and eventually to New York City. Among the few things that they carried with them during their escape was the manuscript for the first Curious George book. Once they made it to America, they sold the book to Houghton Mifflin, which published it in 1941.
During my tour of the exhibit, I could not help but notice that I was surrounded by children and their families exploring the exhibit and having fun together. Maryann O’Keeffe, the Library Program Coordinator at ImaginOn, commented on the popularity of the exhibit in an email that she sent to me. She wrote, “This exhibit has been our most popular one by far, exceeding attendance records for the past 13 years, with nearly 17,000 visitors in June alone. I believe that it is so popular because kids who grew up reading and watching Curious George are now parents (and grandparents!) themselves and I’ve heard them introduce kids to George and the Man in the Yellow Hat that way.”
For readers who want to know more about “Curious George: Let’s Get Curious,” please click on the following link: https://www.imaginon.org/blog/summer-exhibit-%E2%80%9Ccurious-george-let%E2%80%99s-get-curious%E2%80%9D
I am pleased that ImaginOn is hosting the Curious George exhibit this summer. This exhibit celebrates Margaret and H. A. Rey’s classic picture books, but it also celebrates the contributions that immigrants have made to our culture. As I see it, all of us in Storied Charlote and beyond are fortunate that America welcomed two European Jews who fled the Nazis in 1940 and brought with them a story about a curious monkey.