By: Holly Ramer, Associated Press
WATERVILLE VALLEY, NH (AP).- Long before he pedaled himself into all sorts of mischief in “Curious George Rides a Bike,” the famous monkey took a much more harrowing ride when his creators escaped the Nazi invasion of France. The manuscript that would later launch their beloved series of children’s books was among the few belongings that Margret and H.A. Rey took with them when they fled Paris in June 1940, just days before German troops marched into the city. Both German Jews, the husband-and-wife team cobbled together two bikes out of spare parts and peddled south to Orleans. Trains carried them through Spain and Portugal, where they boarded a ship to the United States. Eighteen years later, the Reys built a summer cottage in New Hampshire, where an exhibit about their wartime escape now is on display at a nonprofit center dedicated to the couple’s legacy. To complement the exhibit, which was created by the Institute for Holocaust Education i