Hans Augusto H. Rey , worked with his wife Margret Rey as writers and illustrators of books for kids. They were well known for their Curious George series.
Hans and Margret were both Jewish and of German birth. They met in Brazil, where Hans was working as a salesman and Margret had gone to escape the rise of Nazism. They married in 1935 and moved to Paris that same year.
(H.A. Rey photo #2)
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 today, but one of its characters, an adorably impish monkey called Curious George, was such a success that the couple considered composing a book just about him. Their work was interrupted with the outbreak of World War Ii. As Jews, the Reys decided to flee Paris before the Nazis seized the city. Curious George Takes a Job won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Prize in 1960. 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.
(H.A. Rey photo #3)
The Reys' odyssey brought them to 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 works were released by Houghton Mifflin in 1941.
H.A. Rey
