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Tuesday, September 19, 2000 By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The manuscript cover was a bit tattered, but children's book editor Anita Silvey knew she had struck gold last year when she unearthed a never-before-published book written and illustrated by "Curious George" creators H.A. and Margret Rey.
Silvey's company, Houghton Mifflin, has just published the book, "Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World" ($15). With its vivid watercolors, cheerful tone and inquisitive protagonist, "Whiteblack" is reminiscent of the "Curious George" books that earned fame and fortune for the Reys.
But "Whiteblack," which received a top review from Publishers Weekly, is a wonderful book in its own right. The snappy text, written by Margret Rey, just zips along as Whiteblack, the Chief Storyteller of Penguinland, journeys around the world in search of new tales to tell his friends.
H.A. Rey's watercolors are vibrant and playful, perfectly capturing Whiteblack's equanimity in the face of the perils he encounters along the way.
"Part of what is so exciting is that it is such a good book," Silvey said in a recent interview. "Most manuscripts hidden away in attics should really stay in the attic. This one is an exception."
Silvey made her find last October, when she was invited to a preview of a University of Southern Mississippi exhibit on the Reys' work. Before her death in 1996 (H.A. Rey died in 1976), Margret Rey had willed all of the Reys' papers to the de Grummond collection at the University of Southern Mississippi after extensive correspondence with Lena de Grummond, who created the collection.
At the preview, Silvey spotted an intriguing illustration in a glass case labeled "Unpublished Work of H.A. Rey." The picture showed a polar bear, a seal and a penguin.
When the exhibit curator showed Silvey the manuscript from which the illustration was taken, Silvey was stunned to discover that it was an entire book whose existence had somehow been overlooked.
In fact, the Paris address on the inside cover of the manuscript was proof that it was one of the manuscripts the Reys carried on their bicycles as they fled Paris on June 14, 1940, just hours before the German army entered the city. Until Silvey's discovery, book experts believed that the Reys had carried out just four manuscripts, including the original manuscript for "Curious George."
"I literally got a chill down my spine when I saw the Paris address," said Silvey, the vice president for publishing at Houghton Mifflin's Children's Division. "At that point, I realized they had actually carried out another book on their bicycles."
Correspondence in the Rey collection indicates that the couple wrote "Whiteblack" in 1937 and 1938, when H.A. Rey was working at the Brazilian Pavilion at the Paris World's Fair. He was stationed across from a penguin exhibit and delighted in drawing and creating characters from the penguins he observed, Silvey said.
"Whiteblack is sort of Curious George in a penguin suit," Silvey added. "The Reys were playing with the same idea of someone who is so curious. And, remember, we're talking about two books ['Whiteblack' and 'Curious George'] that the Reys were working on at the same time. So it's not surprising to see that they are very similar in the way in which they are written."
The Reys never had children, and yet they had an amazing amount of intuitive insight into how youngsters think, feel and act. Both Curious George and Whiteblack are archetypes for how children's curiosity helps them learn about the world -- and sometimes gets them in trouble.
H.A. Rey actually used his "infinitely curious" wife as his model for "Curious George," Silvey said, adding that Margret would often "get that monkey look on her face" as she explored something new.
Young readers especially appreciate the Reys' "lightness of touch," Silvey said. "They never preach, they never talk down to children, and they have this wonderful, buoyant spirit."
After fleeing Paris, the Reys sailed to Brazil and then to New York, where they arrived in October 1940. They met with Grace Hogarth, the founder of Houghton Mifflin's children's book department, who awarded them a contract for four books they had carried out of Paris.
For some unknown reason, "Whiteblack" wasn't part of that contract, although correspondence shows that the Reys did talk with both Hogarth and Harper & Row children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom about the penguin book.
"When I saw the manuscript, the Reys had clearly done some revisions in preparation for publishing it," Silvey said. "But then they put it away and literally never picked it back up.
"They probably turned their hand to the second 'Curious George,' since George's popularity made that a more financially viable project," added Silvey. "Curious George" has sold more than 20 million copies since it was published in 1942.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Reys wrote several more "Curious George" books and a long line of other favorite books, including "Pretzel," "Elizabite," "Cecily G. and the 9 Monkeys," and "Spotty." H.A. Rey was fond of playing with book construction and created several pioneering "lift-the-flap" books, including "How Do You Get There?" and "Anybody At Home?"
In the late 1950s, the Reys retired from children's book writing. They lived off the royalties from their books in Cambridge, Mass., pursuing various hobbies.
In her later years, Margret Rey apparently told her friend and literary executor, Lay Lee Ong, about "Whiteblack," saying that she thought it was one of the best books the couple had done, but that no one had published it.
"This statement particularly amazed me since I had sat many times on Margret's couch and asked her, 'Margret, is there anything else you'd like me to take a look at?' " Silvey writes in a publisher's note at the conclusion of "Whiteblack."
Somehow, the manuscript languished in a stack of the Reys' papers, which eventually were bundled up by Ong and sent to the University of Southern Mississippi. Fortunately, the entire manuscript, even the cover, was preserved together, so as the paper aged, it aged simultaneously.
Yet, Silvey said, there wasn't much evidence of aging in the manuscript. Somehow H.A. Rey's watercolors remained vivid. Just as important, H.A. Rey had laid out the text and the illustrations in the manuscript, so Silvey knew just how he would have wanted the book to look.
"It was almost as if the Reys were sitting on my shoulders as we prepared the book for publication," Silvey said.
Margret Rey often described her books as her "children," Silvey added. "It's as if I found one of their children who had been in an orphanage all these years. I wish Margret could be here to see this, but I think that somewhere in the great book discussion in the sky, she's seeing 'Whiteblack' finally come into the world."
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