Curious George & Rey Unit -- part 2

Today, we spent the morning reading some other non-CG books by the Reys:

Anybody at Home? – flip the flap to see who lives where!
Billy’s Picture – everyone wants to help Billy the Bunny paint a picture.
Elizabite: Adventures of a Carnivorous Plant – no one appreciates the odd plant that wants to eat ANY kind of meat until she decides to eat an unwanted guest.
How Do You Get There? -- flip the flap to see how you get from here to there.
Pretzel – the longest dachshund in the world can’t impress his neighbor dog, Greta, until she needs him.
Spotty – the only brown-spotted bunny in a family of white rabbits, takes off on an adventure to find others like himself.
Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World – an inquisitive penguin leaves the South Pole to find out what else there is in the world.
These are some of the best picture books --it's almost a shame that their CG books "outshine" their other work. These really are alot of fun to read, too!

We also finished the biography of the Reys' escape from war-torn Paris -- 4 months of bicycling, train-riding, boating finally found the Reys in New York (where Margret's sister lived and they had publishing contacts). Somehow all of their possessions that they left behind in Paris -- which were to be shipped to them in New York (but when they left, they didn't know how to get them to NY, nor is there any indication of the stuff finally got there!) -- arrived nine months after they arrived in NY (Oct. 1940). A year after they arrived in the States, CG was published and the Reys never look back.

I can't say enough good things about this book -- my 6 and 7 yo kids enjoyed listening to it; the drawings are lovely and interesting, the text is succinct and action-packed, and the story is fascinating. On the inside front cover is a sketched map of the trip from Paris to Lisbon -- a trip that took the Reys one month and many scary incidents along the way; on the back inside cover is a map of the journey from Lisbon to New York, with a stop in Rio deJaneiro. These maps really helped the kids see exactly how far the Reys had to go -- and others like them in trying to flee from Hitler's war machine.

Honestly, no unit on CG would be complete without this book; additionally, no unit on WW2, US in the '40s, or life of immigrants would be as interesting without this book!