Our New Unit -- Curious George

We just started a new unit on Curious George and the Rey's. We are having such fun with these classic stories of an overly inquisitive monkey -- hmmm...seems like I have a few around here! We're learning so much about the authors and are anxiously awaiting the other Rey books we've put on request at the library. Two we have on our shelves already (which are exceptional) are: Find the Constellations and The Stars

Here are the resources we've started using:
Books We’re Reading:

Borden, Louise (illus by Allan Drummond) -- Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and HA Rey
This is a very readable (even to the littles) biography of Hans Augusto Reyersbach and Margarete Waldstein Reyersbach. It’s wonderful and lots of rabbit trails from this one.

Rey, Margret and H.A. -- The Complete Adventures of Curious George
For the 60th anniversary of Curious George’s debut to the reading public, Houghton Mifflin produced this special collection that includes all the original stories as well as a short biography of the Reys and a “photo album” of the couple’s adventures.

Rey Margret and H.A. -- Curious George's Big Book of Curiosity
A little kids’ book that uses George as the main character for introducing all things that kids might be curious about – shapes, animals, numbers and counting, colors, words, etc. It’s more a dictionary than a book – but still a great addition to the unit study.

Web-sites for Research:

Houghton-Mifflin created a web-site for all things Curious George-y. Games, printables, facts and other fun stuff are all available at the Curious George site.

Some basic background facts can be gleaned from the Wikipedia entry for the Reys.

The deGrummond Children’s Literature Collection, housed at the University of Southern Mississippi, was lucky enough to receive many of the Reys’ original artwork and manuscripts to initiate their collection. As noted on the site:

The Rey Collection contains complete sets of original drawings and color separations for six Curious George titles and sketches for a seventh. Dummies, color separations, and full color illustrations are held for a number of other picture books including Tit for Tat, Billy's Picture, Anybody at Home?, Elizabite, See the Circus, Katy-No-Pocket, and Zebrology. An interesting component of the holdings are dummies and preliminary sketches for several unpublished works including "Nonsense ABC," "La Rue: Decoupages a Colorer," and "O Vegetariano Convertido."