Curious George Learns the Alphabet

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Curious George Learns The Alphabet
CuriousGeorgeLearnsTheAlphabet.jpg
First edition
Author H. A. Rey
Margret Rey
LanguageEnglish
Series Curious George
Genre Children's literature
Publisher Houghton Mifflin
Publication date
1963
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint
Preceded by Curious George Flies a Kite  
Followed by Curious George Goes to the Hospital  

Curious George Learns the Alphabet is a children's book written and illustrated by Margret Rey and H. A. Rey and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1963. It is the sixth book in the original Curious George series. [1]

Plot

George curiously looks at the little black marks, dots, and lines in the man with the yellow hat's books, and starts tearing some pages. When the man returns, he picks on George scolding him. If George wants to read a story, he first has to know the letters of the alphabet. The man then sets up a pad and begins to write each of the letters from the alphabet as well as drawing a picture for each letter (capital and lowercase letter) of the alphabet, correlating to the letter each individual picture starts with.

The man tells George he now has three letters: A, B, and C. With three letters, George can make a word, the first word he can read himself: cab (another word for a taxi). George knows what a cab is since the man once took him for a ride in a cab. They then draw the next few letters.

After learning seven letters, The Man writes words that can be made with these letters down: Dad, Ed, bad, bed, bag, cage, and feed. The Man then tells George to read them while he gets him his lunch. However, when The Man comes back with George's lunch, he catches George wearing the alphabet chart around his neck. When he sees George's mischief, The Man scolds George, saying that the only one of the words that George can read appears to be "bad". The Man then decides they had enough for the morning. He feeds George and lets him take a nap, before they go on with the letters.

The Man tells George that M is the 13th letter of the alphabet, and since the whole alphabet has 26 letters, this means that they are halfway through. The Man gives George a pad of paper and a pencil to list some words that use the first 13 letters. George started to think of words, and then he wrote them down and shows them to The Man. He is quite impressed with the real words (ball, milk, cake, ham, jam, egg, lime, feed, and kid), but gets confused at the gibberish words (dalg, glidj, and blimlimlim). He reminds George that not just any arrangement of letters will form a word. George and The Man then begin to look at the other half of the alphabet.

The Man tells George to get his football. He then says that it will do George good to play as quarterback for a while before they go on with the letters.

The Man tells George that it is snack time. He gives George a note to run over to the baker and hand him the note and to come right back with one dozen (12) doughnuts without any tricks. George curiously looks at the note the man had written and outsmarts his plan by changing the word "one" to "ten". Then, he goes over to the bakery to request ten dozen doughnuts to the baker. The baker, unaware that the note originally and specifically said "one dozen", says that an extra-large bag is needed for ten dozen doughnuts. It may be a lot of doughnuts (except maybe for an extremely big doughnut party), but that is what the note said. George brings the bag of ten dozen (120) doughnuts home, opens the bag and dumps them out onto the floor. When the man catches George dumping all the doughnuts down to the floor and sees that the note has been changed, he sternly scolds him and says that it must be what he (himself) gets for teaching the alphabet to a little monkey. The man tells George he cannot eat any doughnuts right now and to put them all back in the bag, so that they will finish the alphabet.

Since Z is the last letter of the alphabet, the man tells George that he now knows all 26 letters of the alphabet, and now he may have the doughnuts. At the last page, the story ends when George (before eating some doughnuts) takes the majority of the doughnuts and spells out "THE END".

References

  1. Rey, H.A. (1963). Curious George Learns the Alphabet. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN   9780544105232.{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)