By George, It's a Brand New Book!

By Laura C. Girardi

Margret and H.A. Rey teamed up to invent Curious George and Whiteblack.

Illustrator Hans Augusto Rey and his wife Margret created one of the best-loved book characters of all time: that naughty monkey Curious George. But if history had been a little different, they might have also been famous for another curious creature: Whiteblack the Penguin. Whiteblack was one of the Reys' early creations, but his tale was somehow lost. Now, 63 years after it was written and several years after its authors' deaths, Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World is being published for the first time!

The book is about Penguinland's chief storyteller and radio host. Fearing he has run out of stories to tell, Whiteblack takes a trip to experience new things and collect stories. Among his adventures is seeing his first human being. The penguin's reaction: "Why he looks just like me! White shirt, dark coat, and he walks on two legs."

Whiteblack was inspired by a penguin exhibit at the 1937 Paris World's Fair. The story was one of five books the Reys took with them when they escaped Paris by bicycle in 1940. The Jewish couple was fleeing Germany's Nazis, who killed millions of European Jews by the end of World War II.

Some say Margret considered Whiteblack to be one of their best works. The book-publishing company, Harper and Row, nearly printed it years ago, but the job was never done. Then last October, Anita Silvey, of publisher Houghton Mifflin, spotted some "Whiteblack"" illustrations at an exhibit of the Reys' works at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. Silvey quickly decided to take Whiteblack the Penguin under her wing. She says, "It's as if I found one of the Reys' children who had been in an orphanage."