That is very unfair and very sad.”īy the end of the book, George finds himself happily at his new home in the zoo, surrounded by other animals. In Africa, George was free, and now he is trapped in this jail. “Because a jail is a horrible place to be. Once again, I asked my daughter, “How do you think George is feeling now?” Several pages later, George is in the United States getting into trouble with the fire department and lands himself in jail. “And scared, too,” I added.Īs George is being transported to the Man with the Yellow Hat’s boat, I point out the Whiteness of the Man with the Yellow Hat (in addition to the majority of the sailors and officers that follow in later pages). Nevertheless, George is shortly “trapped” and I asked my daughter: “How do you think George is feeling right now?” Though the comparison is obvious to me as an adult, I did not share the history of White men going to Africa and taking as their own what does not belong to them. Africa is his home and he has all the space he wants to play, and find food, and be free.” “No,” my daughter ascertained the answer I was going for. “Do you think the man should take George home with him?” I would like to take him home with me.”Īgain, I paused and looked at my daughter. I continued to read as the Man in the Yellow Hat makes his first appearance on the scene: “What a nice monkey. So far, I could think of “Curious George” as an opportunity to speak about Africa to my daughter, but very quickly, the plot thickened. “And the majority of the people who live in Africa have brown skin.” Let me show you.” I took out the small world map my mom had given her to show where Argentina and China are located (countries where her grandparents are currently residing) and pointed to Africa. At the beginning of my teaching career, I had the opportunity to experience professional development with anti-racist educator and author, Enid Lee. One of the many things I learned relates to Enid Lee’s “Rethinking Africa in the Curriculum” which, in its most simple terms, encourages us to “name Africa” in the way I “name race” as a way of “un-invisibilizing” the African continent and demystifying the ignorance of “Africa = jungle.”Īnd so, I spoke to my daughter about Africa: “Africa is a huge continent with many different countries. I opened the book and read the first lines to my daughter: “This is George. It’s not that I didn’t remember Curious George-and have my suspicions about its message-but, I opted to store on our bookshelf since the book is a “classic,” and I had read it as a child. The Spanish version of the original “Curious George” found its way to our bookshelf via hand-me-downs and my three-year-old daughter discovered it after diligently searching for a “new, new, new book that I’ve never, ever read.”
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