Curious George Goes to the Hospital
 First edition | |
| Author |
H. A. Rey Margret Rey |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Curious George |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
Publication date | 1966 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Curious George Learns the Alphabet |
Curious George Goes to the Hospital is a children's book written and illustrated by Margret Rey and H. A. Rey and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1966. It is the seventh and final book in the original Curious George series, and tells the story of George's experiences in a hospital after swallowing a jigsaw puzzle piece. The book was written to ease the way for hospital-bound children.[1]
Plot
George wakes up one day to find a box on the desk. Upon opening it, he pulls out a colorful jigsaw puzzle piece, which he thinks is a piece of candy and inadvertently eats it. Later, The Man with the Yellow Hat comes home and discovers that George has already opened the puzzle and they both proceed to work on it. Unfortunately, the last piece is missing, and they try to find it, but give up for the night and head to bed. The next morning, George is too sick to eat breakfast, so The Man calls a doctor who, upon examining him, recommends he go to the hospital.
Upon arrival at the hospital, a nurse named Carol takes George and The Man back, gives George a barium drink, then puts him on the x-ray table. The x-rays come back showing the puzzle piece still lodged in George's stomach, undigested. While George and the Man are waiting their turn, they run into a mother and her young daughter, Betsy, who is frowning, because this is her first time in a hospital and she is scared. George is then admitted to the hospital overnight, and is taken to the children's ward by the same nurse, where he is given a pill and a shot to put him to sleep and is wheeled into surgery.
When he wakes up, he is groggy and neglects in the good news that the piece is out of him or of the book The Man has, and goes back to sleep.
When George is all better and relieved the next morning, he has some ice cream, and is taken to the play room, where several children, including a still-frowning Betsy, have gathered. George meets another kid in a wheelchair with a broken leg who is going to try to walk later with his cast still on. At this point, George starts doing things that end up starting to break Betsy out of her funk. First, using all four limbs, he puts on a puppet show for the kids, which gets her to start smiling a bit. Next, he finds a record player, stands on the turntable, turns it on, and spins around faster and faster, until he flies off and luckily lands on a large pillow to cushion his landing. The kids laugh at it, and Betsy smiles again, until the nurse picks him up and takes him to a spot to nap it off.
When he wakes up, all the kids and the nurse are diverted from him as the boy with the broken leg tries to walk. Noticing the wheelchair empty, George hops into it and wheels it out of the room. By the time the nurse notices it gone, George is already around the corner and heading down a steep ramp to the first floor right at a couple of attendants (including a mayor), pushing food carts. George luckily jumps off the wheelchair before it crashes into the carts, spilling food all over the place and damaging the dishes and wheelchair. All the kids come out to see this accident happen, and the first one to laugh at it is Betsy. This gets everyone laughing, except George who begins to cry about his accident. Betsy sees this, and runs down the ramp to console George, and tells him this is what finally made her smile and be happy. The adults just agree to clean up the mess and be done with it. The adults tell George that he was not in trouble because he made Betsy happy, and the Man arrives to take him home. As they are about to leave, the nurse runs out with a little present for George to take home. Upon arrival home, George opens it and finds it to be the puzzle piece he swallowed, which they successfully put where it belongs to complete the picture.
Notes
- ↑ Rey 2001, unpaged Introduction
References
- Rey, H. A. and Margaret Rey (2001). The Complete Adventures of Curious George. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-547-39100-7.