*** Welcome to piglix ***

H.A. Rey

H. A. Rey
H.a. rey.jpg
H. A. Rey reading to children in the early 1970s
Born Hans Augusto Reyersbach
(1898-09-16)September 16, 1898
Hamburg, Germany
Died August 26, 1977(1977-08-26) (aged 78)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Occupation children's book author
Nationality American
Ethnicity Jewish
Genre Children's literature
Notable works Curious George
Notable awards Curious George Takes a Job was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1960.
Spouse Margret Rey (1935–1977; his death)

Hans Augusto Rey (September 16, 1898 – August 26, 1977) was a German-born American illustrator and author, known best for the Curious George series of children's picture books that he and his wife Margret Rey created from 1939 to 1966.

Hans Augusto Reyersbach was born in Hamburg, Germany, as was his wife Margret. Hans' and Margret's fathers were German Jews; Margret's mother was not. The couple first met in Hamburg at Margret's sister's 16th birthday party. They met again in Brazil, where Hans was working as a salesman of bathtubs and Margret had gone to escape the rise of Nazism in Germany. They married in 1935 and moved to Paris in August of that year. They lived in Montmartre and fled Paris in June 1940 on self-made bicycles, carrying the Curious George manuscript with them.

He died three weeks before his 79th birthday.

While in Paris, Hans's animal drawings came to the attention of a French publisher, who commissioned him to write a children's book. The result, Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys, is little remembered, but one of its characters, an adorably impish monkey named Curious George, was such a success that the couple considered writing a book just about him. The outbreak of World War II interrupted their work. As Jews, the Reys decided to flee Paris before the Nazis seized the city. Hans assembled two bicycles, and they fled Paris just a few hours before it fell. Among the meager possessions they brought with them was the illustrated manuscript of Curious George.

The Reys' odyssey brought them to Bayonne, France where they were issued life-saving visas signed by Vice-Consul Manuel Vieira Braga (following instructions from Aristides de Sousa Mendes) on June 20, 1940. They crossed the Spanish border, where they bought train tickets to Lisbon. From there they returned to Brazil, where they had met five years earlier, but this time they continued to New York. The Reys escaped Europe carrying the manuscript to the first Curious George book, which they then published in New York by Houghton Mifflin in 1941. Hans and Margret originally planned to use watercolor illustrations, but since they were responsible for the color separation, he changed these to the cartoon-like images that continue to be featured in each of the books. (A collector's edition with the original watercolors has since been released.)


...
Wikipedia

...