Author reveals famous children’s book’s ‘back story’

It was a mere snippet of information, stumbled upon by chance, that led children’s-book author Louise Borden to years of researching and writing “The Journey That Saved Curious George.” (Borden will be here next month as part of the Jewish Book Fair; See below for details.)

It was this sentence — “On a rainy morning in June 1940, (the Reys) escaped on bicycles from Paris.” — that piqued Borden’s interest. She knew that Margret and H.A. Rey were the authors of the Curious George books, but nothing else. Borden said she had heard about the great exodus from Paris as the Germans closed in on the capital in 1940, and she wondered why no one else had written about the Reys’ story — assuming there was one to tell.

Long journey
Borden had written other biographies for children, but this one was different.

“I was the pathfinder; I had to find the information,” she said.

Borden first got out a map to see just how long it would have taken the Reys to bicycle from Paris to Lisbon. Her own curiosity led her to the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, where all the Rey archives had just been sent. She made three trips to Paris to visit the Terrass Hotel and Chateau Feuga (two places the Reys had resided). She translated letters and contacted people in Hamburg, Germany, at the Hagenbeck Zoo so she could get photos of the zoo that Hans had visited as a child.

Somewhere along the way, Borden discovered the Reys were both Jews who grew up in Hamburg. They didn’t meet, however, until much later, when they were both living in Brazil.

“I needed to gain a whole understanding of their lives,” Borden said. “There were millions of people on the roads of France, most of them French and some from other parts of Europe. The Reys were among them, and every person had a story.

”But to think of the fact that they were Jewish, it was going to be more important for them to get out of the country than a French citizen who was not Jewish.”

When Borden discovered where the Reys crossed the border into Portugal, “it was like I had won the lottery. I was like a detective, and I had clues; my house was filled with research for four years. It was wonderful.

“A lot of my books had taken me on these interesting journeys, but this one was very special for a lot of reasons.”

Although she had already written 20 books, Borden said she approached this project with trepidation. Although she was encouraged by her editor at Simon & Schuster, they would not be able to publish it. All rights to Curious George are owned by the Houghton Mifflin Co.

“I’m not a professional biographer, and I’m not some academic scholar in children’s literature, so I was nervous about embarking on this,” she said. “I had no contract, I had not been given an advance; I was just doing this on my own, which is a lot of time and treasure. So I took some small steps. I started a file, ‘June 1940,’ I got out all my books about that time period and tried to find information about Margret and Hans.”

Living history
Borden studied history and creative writing in college, then took a job as assistant first-grade teacher in Boston. She constantly made up books for children to read in the classroom, and her husband told her she should write children’s books. She said no, she was going to be the next William Manchester, a highly regarded historian.

But her life was to take a different turn.

“I was involved with children and education, and then I started taking many, many small steps to get to where I am today,” she said. “I started submitting works in the late 1980s, and my first book was accepted in 1987, and I’ve written 25 books. So this life that I live just kind of unfolded along the way, with a lot of perseverance and a lot of work.”

Borden spends a lot of time at schools doing presentations on how writers work.

“I’ve been to 600 schools around the country,” she said. “Education is very important to me, and reading and writing workshops. Usually, I’m standing in a gym with 200 children, and I do a presentation with slides or handouts. I want them to see themselves as writers and as storytellers and that they’re living history right now.”

Saving ‘Curious George’
Louise Borden will discuss her book at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, at the Jewish Community Campus as part of the 2009 Jewish book Fair. Her talk is co-sponsored by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.

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