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The
Unlikely Journey of a 63-Year-Old Penguin
from Paris, France to Hattiesburg, Mississippi
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The fact that Houghton Mifflin recently published Whiteblack
the Penguin Sees the World, a children's book by H.A.
Rey, may not seem unusual, but the story behind the
book's publication is a fascinating tale. You might
ask how does the manuscript for a children's book created
in Paris in 1938, transported to New York in 1940, and
stored in an attic in Cambridge, Massachusetts for nearly
60 years finally arrive in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
only to be discovered and returned to Boston for publication?
The manuscript creators were H.A. and Margret Rey, best
known for their Curious George series. When the Reys
were living in Paris in the late 1930s, they created
a number of children's books, some of which were published
before they emigrated to the United States. In 1940,
they fled Paris by bicycle hours before the German army
took control, carrying with them only warm clothes and
unpublished manuscripts. Months later, when they finally
settled in New York, they contacted Grace Hogarth, founder
of Houghton Mifflin's children's book department. Based
on the work they presented to her, she offered them
a four-book contract, unheard of at the time. The year
1941 |
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H.
A. Rey, in the late 1930's holding the manuscript
for Whiteblack the Penguin Sees
the World
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saw the publication of Curious George, and children's literature
hasn't been the same since. In 1966 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond was in the early stages of assembling
a research collection of children's literature, where students
and scholars could see the creative process involved in
the creation of children's books. She contacted hundreds
of children's literature authors and illustrators for donations
and was rewarded with shipments of original manuscripts
and illustrations. A charmingly illustrated letter was received
from H.A. Rey on April 20, 1966, followed by a donation
of two original illustrations used in Curious George. The
donations from the Reys continued over the years, and after
Margret Rey's death in 1996, the de Grummond Collection
received their remaining literary archive as a provision
of her will. Within the Rey archive there are a number of
illustrated manuscripts for books that have never been published.
One particularly fine item, "Whiteblack the Penguin Sees
the World," was discovered in the archive and is a superb
example of Rey's early work that utilized a French watercolor
style. In September 1999, an extensive exhibit -- Curious
George Comes to Hattiesburg: The Work of H.A. and Margret
Rey -- was created and shown in Hattiesburg through April
2000. Among the more than 700 items in the exhibit were
several pages from "Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World."
These outstanding illustrations caught the trained eye of
Anita Silvey, longtime editor and publisher of the Reys'
work. After viewing the entire manuscript, she knew there
was a fresh "new" book waiting to be published. Now, sixty-three
years after its creation, Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the
World has been published and has met with critical acclaim.
The book is now in its fourth printing and received a great
deal of national attention when it hit the bookstores last
August. An interview with Anita Silvey was broadcast on
National Public Radio, there were stories in major newspapers,
and the CBS Early Show featured a segment on the discovery
of the manuscript and its subsequent publication.
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