Book Review: Curious George Goes to the Circus

"George," said the man with the yellow hat, "the circus is in town tonight. Let's go." With those words begins another mediocre installment in the laborious "adventures" of who the book jacket calls “the best loved monkey in America”. Hardly. The novel begins promisingly enough, with an intriguing page in which George and the man with the yellow hat stand in line for tickets. By the next page, however, things take a turn for the worse as the man leaves to buy some cotton candy. Author Margaret Rey is simply becoming too predictable, but her audience doesn’t seem to care. Once the man tells George “Wait right here and don’t get into trouble,” we know we’re heading down the same tired road. The monkey fucks up again and the man with the yellow hat is stuck bailing his ass out again. It’s George-by-the-numbers again, and I simply cannot recommend this book.

I don’t want to give away too much plot-wise (not that there’s much of one to speak of), but it involves George makes several enemies when he disrupts a circus act and is forced to suffer the consequences of his mistake. The one redeeming quality of the book is the climax, in which an elephant sneezes.

The supporting characters are all generic cardboard cut-outs, such as the ringmaster, whose only line of dialogue is “The world’s greatest circus is ready to begin”. What are we supposed to know about his motivations from that one line? Why would I care that he’s upset about the monkey ruining the acrobatics if I don’t know about his childhood, his passions, what he does after the circus. Is he happy? Does he drink too much? Is his wife cheating on him? I can’t answer these questions because none of them were explored, all I can tell you is that he has a moustache and wears a top hat.

There is also the problem of editing. At 28 pages with 18 point type, this is hardly a leisurely read. I brought this book with me on a two week vacation in Maui and barely got half way through. It’s filled with seemingly redundant exposition like “George was curious.” I also found the word “high” in the sentence “He climbed to the top of the ladder and onto the high platform” completely unnecessary. We can see from the picture accompanying the passage that the platform is quite tall.

I was also put off by several grammatical errors. “George sneaked into the tent”? I think not. It should be “snuck into the tent”. And Rey writes that the acrobats had “just climbed up”, when any English 101 student could tell you the correct tense is “clumb”.

What happened to the once-brilliant author of such thought-provoking tomes like “Curious George Learns the Alphabet” and “Curious George Visits the Zoo”? Even last year’s underwhelming “Curious George and the Pizza” had more substance than this contrived hodgepodge of unresolved plotlines, heavy-handed dialogue, and underdeveloped characters. Therefore, I can only give this book 3 ½ out of 4 stars.