My mother and I both grew up on Curious George children's books. We never thought much about who created them, we just enjoyed them for what they were. They were stories about a monkey who would get into trouble because it was so curious about everything. Each story was usually an adventure about the trouble he got into. As the New York Times describes, "He was a mischief maker, an innocent, born in the jungle and lured into the strange world of humans." The art was good and the stories were nice, but they weren't so phenomenal that we would consider them to be extraordinary. They were just a popular children's book series.
In fact, I didn't know that my mother read them as a child until recently when she sent me a New York Times article reviewing the exhibition of the artwork from the book. She was excited to send me the article because she knew I read them as a child, because she read them as a child and because of the life story of the authors. The authors were actually Jews in Paris during the time of the Nazi's. The New York Times article touches upon the possibility of Curious George's adventures paralleling their experiences running and hiding from the Nazis, but overall, there are no clear explicit connections. It could have been an outlet for them during hard times, but even the NY Times is unsure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/arts/design/26curious.html
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