As a mother of 2 small children, I spend a lot of time around children’s entertainment in many forms: movies, TV shows, songs, books, etc. Most children’s entertainment is at worst mildly irritating while mostly harmless, and at best able to make you, a grown adult, openly weep from 2 rooms away. (Why am I never prepared for the end of Inside Out? That movie WRECKS ME.) As I experience repeated viewings/readings/etc. of the same kids’ media ad nauseam, I find myself growing overly critical of what is meant to be simple, innocent entertainment for small children. (I’m sure no other parent can identify with this.) I figured if I’m going to be this sarcastically over-analytical about harmless kids’ entertainment, I really should share it with the world. So I am introducing an ongoing feature for my blog: Stephanie Overanalyzes Children’s Entertainment.

Our first installment features everyone’s favorite trouble-making monkey

Curious George and the Bunny is a short children’s book by H.A. Rey. It was given to my children by their Great Uncle Larry and Great Aunt Joyce. (Just thought I’d give them a shout-out; not that they’d ever actually read this.) It’s a favorite with my sons, but after hundred or so readings, I find myself taking issue with the central concept of this story.

For those who haven’t read it… The book starts out with George the curious monkey finding a rabbit house full of a mother bunny and her many babies. George wants to hold a baby bunny, so he takes one out of the pen and cuddles it. (Without the consent of either the mother or the bunny, may I add.) Then he decides he wants to play hide-and-seek, so he puts the bunny down, but the bunny immediately runs away. George is sad that he can’t find the bunny and won’t be able to return it to its mother. Then George gets the idea to let the mother bunny out of the pen, and he follows her to where she finds her baby bunny hiding under a tree. George takes them both back to the pen, and everyone is happy. The end.

I propose this book should actually be called “Curious George Cheats at Hide-and-Seek.”

Don’t let him fool you. This monkey does NOT know how to play hide-and-seek.

Though the book explicitly states that George wants to play hide-and-seek, I’m not convinced he understands HOW one plays that game. When the bunny runs away, George’s first thought somehow isn’t “Oh good, the bunny is running off to hide. As one does when one plays hide-and-seek. Which is the game I expressly said I wanted to play. I shall count to the appropriate number then scamper off to find the bunny.” No, instead George immediately despairs he’ll never see the baby bunny again. He leans into melodramatics, fretting that he’s forever separated a beautiful bunny family. Instead of SEEKING for the HIDDEN bunny, George resorts to freeing the mother bunny and making her do his job for him. When they discover the baby bunny, the book says, “baby bunny was hiding in a hole.” Uh, yeah. Baby bunny was correctly playing hide-and-seek THIS WHOLE TIME. Just as he was invited to do by that weird monkey way back at the beginning. Where y’all been?

By the way, that baby bunny is the best juvenile hide-and-seek player of all time. My nearly-4-year-old son can’t even stay in his hiding spot long enough for me to finish saying “here I come,” and yet somehow this infant rabbit manages to stay hidden for God knows how long, patiently waiting to be found by a strange monkey who, as it turns out, WASN’T EVEN LOOKING FOR HIM.

I’m not really sure what the author was going for with this story. Is it supposed to be a story about George making a mistake and then dumbly yet sweetly making things right, as are most Curious George stories? Because that’s not the lesson I see here. All I see is a story about George blatantly cheating at a popular kids’ game. He asked the bunny to play hide-and-seek. He couldn’t find the bunny. He got someone else to find the bunny. Cheat!

Someone needs to explain to this monkey the rules of hide-and-seek. Cuz he’s real bad at it.