Here's to serendipity. Two artists born in Germany find each other in Brazil, marry, and then settle in Paris, only to be chased away by war. They travel to the US, but not before a harrowing escape accomplished on bike, train and foot, through France, Spain and Portugal -- and another brief stop in Rio.

And you thought Curious George was all about the Man in the Yellow Hat.

Here's to some serendipity of my own: in Cambridge recently with a college-touring daughter, I discovered that Curious George has his own store off Harvard Square. We ducked in, eager to escape talk of SAT scores and GPAs, and the store afforded us the exact respite we needed. I idly flipped through the books--as the record reflects, I'm more Team Bemelmans person than Team Rey (Margret and HA Rey produced the Curious George Books), but then I found this book: The Journey that Saved Curious George. I couldn't put it down. I still can't. It's a remarkable achievement: written and illustrated for kids, but absolutely engrossing for adults. True, it's not strictly a Paris story--but this is not a strict blog series--but it's an incredible story nonetheless. It's extraordinarily well-researched and written, and each page flops open like one from a long-lost scrapbook. Who knew the Reys once owned Marmosets in Brazil -- which, tragically, didn't survive their trip to Europe, even after Margret knitted sweaters for them?

In Paris, they kept turtles, and...to say more would spoil the many cliffhangers of this story (which is safe to read to younger kids, but does indeed have its dark moments).

It's always true that beneath every page of a book lie so many more layers of creation than a reader could ever guess at -- but in this case, that includes several continents, too. Buy the book, read it, and then head back to the Curious George volumes on your shelf and see if you're not curious how such sunny volumes could have emerged from such a dark time.