Margret E. Rey; Writer of 7 ‘Curious George’ Books

Margret E. Rey, the writing half of the team that created “Curious George,” the impish monkey hero of seven classic children’s books, has died. She was 90.

Rey, who had continued to preside over worldwide merchandising of monkey gear, died Saturday in her home in Cambridge, Mass. She had suffered a heart attack about three weeks ago.

Hans Augusto “H.A.” Rey, her husband and the artist who drew the expressive face and antic body of little George, died in 1977.

Two of Margret Rey’s books about other animal heroes, “Spotty” and “Pretzel,” are scheduled for re-release in 1997.

The seven Curious George books written and drawn by the Reys have sold more than 12 million copies in English and an additional 8 million copies in a dozen other languages. An anthology, released last year and titled “The Complete Adventures of Curious George,” is now in its second printing.

The Reys had no children and said they never studied juvenile readers.

“We wrote for ourselves,” Margret Rey told The Times last May. “Then, by pleasant coincidence, the children liked what we liked. This business of research is nonsense.”

The carefully monitored merchandising of Curious George books, puzzles, filmstrips, stuffed animals, children’s clothing, wristwatches and lunch boxes was lucrative. Rey celebrated her 90th birthday in May by donating $1 million each to the Boston Public Library and to Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital Center for Alternative Medicine for Research.

Rey grew up in Germany. She met her future husband in Hamburg when she was 10 and slid down a banister right into him. He was then 18 and courting her older sister. After Margret studied art at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, and the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf, Germany, she went to Rio de Janeiro where she began working as a photographer.

Again she encountered Hans Rey and they married in 1935. They settled in Paris where he drew newspaper cartoons and she wrote advertising copy, in particular some singing commercials for margarine.

“It made me immune to all commercials for life,” she told The Times.

A French publisher was so taken with Hans’ animal cartoons that he suggested they do a children’s book. The first was “Raphael et les Neuf Singes,” or “Raphael and the Nine Monkeys.” One of the monkeys, Zozo, grew up to become George.

“We had never dreamed of children’s books,” Margret Rey said. “But we needed money.”

The Reys fled Paris on bicycles just hours before Hitler’s troops marched into the city. Their pockets were stuffed with monkey manuscripts and other writings.

They made their way from Spain to Portugal and to New York, where George was quickly snapped up by Houghton Mifflin publishers. The first Curious George book was published in 1941 and the seventh 35 years later. The little monkey happily did the things children may wish they could do--wreak havoc and be rescued or save the day and be praised.

Barely 5 feet tall and red-haired, Rey said she occasionally served as her artist husband’s human model for their impish little monkey. She would scrunch up her face, move her limbs about or even leap from one piece of furniture to another.

“My husband always called me curious,” she said. “But then I think most people are.”

The Reys had lived in Cambridge since 1963.