What's going on, Louis Menand once asked, in The Cat in the Hat? Two young children, home alone on a rainy day, the door unlocked, under the supervision of a fish. What was their mother thinking? Where had she gone? These questions are the invisible mass of the iceberg moving beneath the water.
I thought of Menand this evening while reading Curious George. The man in the yellow hat--do I worry too much, or are we supposed to worry about him? He travels to Africa, captures George, hauls him across the ocean, and, after some implausible adventures, including the monkey enjoying a nap and "a good pipe," deposits him in the zoo. What a wonderful place for George to live! That is how it ends, but I don't believe it. Or approve it. If I was the chooser, instead of just the reader, I would opt for Al Perkins's version of King Midas and the Golden Touch, at least on nights the Twins aren't on TV (it's sort of long). It's never too early to learn to distrust your wishes, and this version makes the king's palpable. Gold! Gold! Gold! He's down in the palace cellar where it's stored, admiring the heaps of it, his enjoyment practically erotic in its intensity, when the temptation scene occurs. It wouldn't be a children's story if he didn't get a second wish to cancel the first.
