Cecily G. And The 9 Monkeys


Did you know that Curious George was not the first book to include Curious George?  And that his original European name was Fifi!!!!  Neither did I! 

THREE PROS
*The nostalgia of the whole thing makes you want to love it, warts and all  
*Not trying to get too Jerry Maguire on you here, but who can resist a script where downtrodden spirits come together to heal and, eventually, complete each other
*Half of the pages are dedicated to an afterword about H.A. Rey, his wife, and how Curious George came to be -- totally uninteresting to kids, but was quite the opposite to me

THREE CONS 
*A couple of things I didn't like about the writing itself were how the monkeys kind of abused the giraffe while playing plus how Cecily G and Mother Pamplemoose are just ridiculous names to give characters 
*There's a reason why Rey was never consider a great songwriter, and it is best demonstrated by the little ditty included in here 
*Try explaining to a child why you have to stop reading halfway through the book (due to the afterword), especially when there is a cartoon picture of horses and cars staring right back at him or her

ONE DAD'S OPINION
My son absolutely adores George.  He watches him on TV and has a DVD for plane trips.  He sleeps with him every night and even asks us to include him as a part of our family whenever we make up tales for storytime.  I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say they are best friends.  Consequently, when I saw this title staring back at me last week, I grabbed for it faster than any book I have ever seen before.  When I got home, I was so excited to show him what I found that I could barely contain myself.  [In hindsight, this was an odd reaction since we have about ten of Fifi's titles laying around the house and my boy could care less what order they were written in!]  Almost immediately, we sat down to read it.  Alas, by the end, I was slightly underwhelmed.  If it wasn't an origination story, I might have toyed with weighing Borrow versus Donate.  But, given my son's love for that adorable simian and the author backstory provided by Louise Borden, I would feel like a total monkey's uncle if I gave it anything but a Borrow
.    

Buy / BORROW / Donate / Destroy


2 comments:

Ali B said...

If Curious George is a monkey, why doesn't he have a tail?

mysteryguy said...

Hmmmm....excellent point. I'm curious to know the answer myself:)