Wedged triangularly at the intersection of JFK and Brattle, The Curious George Store boasts that it is the world’s only store of its kind. That is a shame. We need more Curious George Stores in this world.
Curious George can be a maddening little fellow—in the first book I pulled from the shelf, “Curious George Goes to the Aquarium,” he releases a whole flock of penguins from their cage and somehow gets praised for it in the end. But this is not about the questionable moral logic of the books. This is about the dazzling artistic merit of the Curious George Store, a darling amalgamation of the thematic genius of Disneyland, the radiant color palette of Munchkinland, and the self-aware hokeyness of Las Vegas.
First things first: I like themes. I thrive on themes. I consider few things as satisfying as a theme done well. The Curious George Store is for everyone who ranks thematic consistency next to godliness—everyone who matches his socks to his sweater when nobody can tell, everyone who cracks puns when others groan, everyone for whom the Hallmark Store at Christmastime is a sparkly incarnation of paradise, everyone whose towels and bedspread match.
The Curious George Store knows how to carry out a theme: The place is a veritable zoo of Curious George wooden cars, Curious George costumes, Curious George puzzles, Curious George pajamas, Curious George kaleidoscopes, Curious George CDs, Curious George notecards, Curious George cups, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. An airplane piloted by George and a hot-air balloon captained by him drop from the ceiling. Doll versions of George dressed in the uniform of every profession imaginable crowd the shelves.
Perhaps even more than themes, I like creativity. The Curious George Store is a shrine to it. It’s an unapologetic ode to imagination, a monument to free spirits, a loud, glitzy, gorgeous declaration that originality is important, and valuable, and marketable, and meaningful, even in a day and age in which STEM subjects are treated as nobler and more practical than the arts and humanities.
Part of the brilliance of the Curious George Store is that it is not just for children. It is, more widely, for children at heart. There are few experiences as sentimental as flipping through Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House in the Big Woods” as “Part of Your World” wafts through the sound system and The Man with the Yellow Hat stares down from the wall. In that moment, all I needed was a turkey-and-cheese Lunchable to feel as though I were right back in first grade. (Or ninth grade. I stopped reading the Little House books in elementary school, but I kept eating those damn Lunchables all the way through high school. My sodium levels have got to be deadly.)
Most of all, the Curious George Store is for the parents who are willing to shell out $100 for a three-foot-tall plush simian. The children of these indulgent parents will grow up to use “summer” as a verb and consider kale a legitimate side dish. But I won’t spend my time worrying about them. For as long as we, the nostalgia-ridden children of the ’90s, get to walk by this magnificently charming shop every day, the store is for us, too. Let us rejoice in this bastion of childhood whimsy we are so very lucky to call our own.
