The drawing H.A. Rey made for Carol Greenhouse inside a copy of Curious George Credit: Courtesy of Carol Greenhouse In 1969, 6-year-old Carol Greenhouse, vacationing with her parents in Florida, saw a man feeding seagulls on the beach. “I was fascinated,” said Carol, now 63 and living in Bur lington. “I’d never seen anyone feed a seagull before.” The man tossed food into the air, where the birds caught it midflight, and he taught her to toss it, too. The man feeding the seagulls, she soon learned, was Hans Augusto Rey, better known as H.A. Rey, who, with his wife, Margret, created Curious George. The mischievous monkey has been the subject of dozens of children’s books and an Emmy Award-winning animated TV series. During their two-week stay on Longboat Key, Greenhouse and her parents, Sam and Eleanore Greenhouse, met Hans on the beach several times and fed seagulls together. After the family returned home to Maryland, a copy of Curious George arrived in the mail. “For Carol,” Hans wrote inside the book, “from her friend, H.A. Rey.” Below the inscription, he drew and colored a picture of Curious George tossing food to a seagull diving toward the beach. H.A. and Margret Rey Credit: Courtesy of de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection The book — along with eight years of correspondence that followed — is now housed at the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. Carol, whose parents are deceased, sold her family’s memorabilia to the executor of the Rey estate last month. Letters she and her parents wrote to Hans were already part of the Rey collection, which fills 300 boxes at the Hattiesburg, Miss., library, where the Reys and Ezra Jack Keats, best known for The Snowy Day, are the most researched children’s authors. The acquisition offers researchers a more complete picture of Curious George’s creators, while the money it brought Carol — she declined to say how much — allows her to help her daughter pursue medical school. Zoe Greenhouse, 23, is enrolled in the postbaccalaureate premedical program at the University of Vermont. Like her mother, Zoe grew up reading Curious George. First published in 1941, the original story of the adventurous monkey has never been out of print. The Reys began working on it when they lived in Paris. On June 12, 1940, as Nazi troops approached the city, the couple, who were Jewish, fled on bicycles that Hans had assembled from spare parts, carrying their manuscript with them, said Louise Borden, author of The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey. Two days later, the German army occupied Paris. First published in 1941, the original story of the adventurous monkey has never been out of print. Carol doesn’t remember how many letters she wrote to Hans; the de Grummond has two. The first was written shortly after they met. “DEAR Mr. REY,” it says, in (mostly) all caps, “I MISS YOU. I MISS FLORIDA TOO. IM SENDING YOU SOMETHING.” She drew a picture of a $100 bill and signed her name. Her mother included a note and a picture that Carol drew for Hans the day the family got home from Florida. It included two stars, one to represent Jupiter and one, Venus, Eleanore explained. Hans, who published two books on astronomy, had apparently discussed stars with Carol. On May 15, 1969, he wrote back: “Shame on me for not having answered your letter sooner for not having said thank you to my friend Carol for sending me ‘something’ — $100, to be precise. Thank you very much, Carol dear!” He addressed the rest of the two-page letter to Carol’s parents and signed it, “Cordially, your fellow beachcomber, Hans.” A childhood letter from Carol to H.A. Rey Credit: Courtesy of de Grummond Children's Literature Collection For eight years, until Hans died in 1977, the families exchanged letters. Most of the correspondence was between Hans and Sam, who had bonded over their shared German-Jewish heritage and interest in world affairs, Carol said. They discussed antiballistic missiles, the promise of wind power, inflation and the possibility of basing currency on a unit of energy. “[I]t sounds rather far out,” Hans wrote in 1974, “but there is some logic to it.” Sam, a statistician who worked for the federal government, had published magazine articles and letters to the editor in the New York Times. Hans sent him a copy of The Elements of Style, a writing manual by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, and encouraged him to write more. In 1974, he went into considerable detail advising Sam to write a book, free of academic jargon, on the U.S. Constitution, a volume that adolescents and adults “will want to read, that holds their attention makes them curious, even,” he wrote. “Such a book should also be good-humored, not ‘preachy’ — people don’t like to be preached to. A little irony in the right place can give some spice. “Well, now it’s me who is preaching, almost,” Hans wrote, “so I’d better stop … Best to all three Greenhouses, Fondly, Hans.” The two men often exchanged or referenced articles they had read. Eleanore occasionally included a note. While Hans mainly directed the substance of his letters to Carol’s parents, he often doodled something at the bottom for her. On one, he drew a skipping Curious George holding a blue flower and wrote, “This flower is for Carol.” On another, next to a tiny Curious George tossing a ball: “throwing a kiss to Carol.” They all, at times, chastised themselves for not writing sooner, and they all spoke of the desire to see each other again, though they never did. The Greenhouses never met Margret, who died at age 90, in 1996. In an undated letter to Hans, Carol wrote — and drew pictures — on a page torn from a spiral notebook. Obviously older at that point, she employed capital and lowercase letters and dotted her i’s with circles: “Dear Mr. Rey, Hi! When are you going to write more Curious George books? Isn’t it disgusting the way we don’t return your letters? I’ll be your Pen Pal! What’s new? How are you? How is Curious George? He hasn’t done some naughty thing and landed in the hospital again has he?” On July 14, 1977, Margret sent a short note to Carol thanking her for a postcard she had sent and informing her that Hans had been ailing with heart trouble and was no longer writing, “but he sends his love to you all and so does George and so do I…” That note marked the end of their correspondence, Carol believes. She was 14. The letters her family received were set aside in a manila envelope. Carol hadn’t considered their monetary value until her daughter decided to study medicine, she said. Zoe and Carol Greenhouse Credit: Mary Ann Lickteig De Grummond curator Karlie Herndon facilitated the sale. When she asked Carol how much she wanted for the collection, Carol named a price range, and Herndon relayed it to the executor of the Rey estate, who agreed. On August 4, without a written sales agreement, Carol put the package in the mail, asking herself if she was too trustful. Shortly after, a check arrived — for more than she had asked. “It felt like 1969,” she said, a time when a verbal agreement sealed with a handshake was as good as a contract. “It felt very loyal to my dad and Hans Rey.” ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Monkey Business | A Burlington woman has sold the letters she and her family received from Curious George creators H.A. and Margret Rey” The post Curious George Mementos Defray Burlington Woman’s Tuition appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less