Curious George

There are seven books about Curious George, written and illustrated by Margret and H.A. Rey between 1941 and 1966.  Curious George is a young monkey who is too curious for his own good and my three-year-old daughter loves the books, for the following reasons (I think).

1. A beautiful balance between illustrations and story, with each reinforcing the other while having its own independent elements: each illustration has elements not explicitly in the written story, allowing a child to use her own curiosity about the details.

2. The discursive nature of the narrative, moving from one activity to the next.  In Curious George Flies a Kite (1958), for instance, George plays with a ball, goes outside when he is curious about a house next door, discovers the house is full of bunnies and takes one out only to have it run away, ties a string to the mother bunny so he can find the baby, rescues the bunny and then climbs a wall where he sees a man with a fishing pole and follows him to watch him fish, goes home and makes his own fishing pole from a mop and a hook on the wall, returns to the lake to fish, falls in the water trying to catch a fish when they don't respond to cake as bait, gets rescued by Bill who has a kite, flies the kite with Bill and then helps to get the kite out of a tree, flies the kite on his own while Bill returns for his bike, gets blown into the sky when the kite takes off with him still holding on, gets rescued by the man with the yellow hat in a helicopter, and gets a baby bunny from Bill to take home.  I think this sort of narrative appeals to a young child, who is always experimenting with new things and having new adventures.

3. Identification.  The man in the yellow hat rescues George from the jungle.  There is no reference to George's original parents so the man in the yellow hat becomes something of a parent figure, with the ambivalent role some would like in a parent, i.e., he leaves one alone to be curious until the curiosity causes problems and then the man in the yellow hat comes to the rescue:  in a helicopter when a kite takes George up into the air, taking George to the doctor when he swallows a piece of a puzzle, picking George up when he destroys an exhibit at a museum, finding George after he joins a circus, rescuing George after he breaks a leg. 

Basically I think children should be encouraged to be curious but should also always be safe, just as George was in these effectively low-key books.