One of my family's favorite children's book characters is Curious George, the friendly little monkey invented by husband-and-wife team H.A. and Margret Rey. We all know George's famous curiosity--but did you know that H.A. Rey is also the author of a groundbreaking book on astronomy?
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Rey's 1952 astronomy guide, The Stars: A New Way to See Them, revolutionized amateur astronomy by depicting the constellations in easy-to-understand diagrams. Before, most star charts and astronomy manuals were stuffed with complex data like Greek symbols and the alphanumeric codes that scientists use for official star names. This kind of information is meaningful mostly to specialists, and no help for beginning stargazers just trying to find shapes in the sky. Rey, however, along with his wife ran a successful advertising business, so he was adept at making visual information intuitive and memorable. Redrawing existing star charts for accessibility, Rey devised new ways to find and identify the constellations. Gemini, for example, sometimes looks in older astronomy manuals more like a horseshoe than the "twins" for which it's named, if you just connect the dots between the main stars. But Rey's new Gemini diagram includes additional stars to flesh out arms, legs and torsos, so that the horseshoe becomes recognizable as two human figures, holding hands.
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In 1954 Rey also adapted his star charts for Find the Constellations, an astronomy guide specifically targeted for children, but if you know Curious George it's easy to see his similarities with Rey's book about stars. Both start with wonder, and use simple scenes to share discovery. They also both were born from adventure. H.A. Rey grew up in Hamburg and learned to read the stars while serving in the first World War. He and Margret fell in love in Rio, where they kept two monkeys as pets, and the couple started writing Curious George when their Parisian honeymoon stretched into a four-year stay.
From the article:
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