Curious George Coloring Pages

George is a good little monkey, and always very curious. That one line explains almost every page here: he sees something new, he wants to try it, and things go a little wrong before they go right. These Curious George coloring pages follow him around the city and the country, usually just one step ahead of the Man with the Yellow Hat.

At home, George rolls paint in big loops across the living room wall, pulls a roll of toilet paper down the hall, splashes in a bubble bath, stirs a pot of spaghetti that boils over, carries a tower of pancakes, plants bulbs in a window box, rides a scooter across the front hall and pulls on a pair of boots far too big for him. In the city he walks hand in hand with his friend past the lampposts, delivers newspapers by bicycle, floats up the street holding a bunch of balloons, hangs from a fire escape, squeegees a window above the skyline, sips a milkshake at the diner, walks two puppies on tangled leashes, climbs the shelves of the library, pushes a cart down the grocery aisle and looks at the stars through a telescope on the roof.

Out of town, he swings on a museum rope under a dinosaur skeleton, kneads dough in a bakery, feeds the ducks, paints a picket fence, gets wrapped up in kite string, picks apples from a ladder and at a farm stand, fishes from a rowboat, feeds the chickens, pulls a sled through the snowy woods and helps (or does not help) pitch a tent. A few pages keep it simple: George smiling, George standing tall, George lost under the big yellow hat.

A monkey who crossed the ocean on paper

Curious George was created by H. A. Rey and Margret Rey, a German-born couple living in Paris. In June 1940, as the German army approached, they left the city on bicycles, carrying the manuscript of the first George story with them. They reached New York by way of Spain, Portugal and Brazil, and Curious George was published in 1941. The Reys wrote seven George books together, and the character later came to television in a long-running animated series for young children.

In the stories, the Man with the Yellow Hat brings George back from Africa to live with him in the city. He is patient, kind and nearly always a little surprised, and he never gets a proper name. The joke of the stories is that George's mistakes often turn out to be useful in the end: the monkey who caused the trouble is the one who saves the day.

George's colors

George is brown, with a lighter tan face, ears, hands and feet. His eyes are small and dark, and his smile is wide. In the books he has no tail at all, which surprises a lot of people; some of the pages here give him a curly one, so color it brown with the rest of him.

The Man's outfit is the other half of every page:

• The hat: bright yellow, with a darker band around the crown.
• The clothes: a yellow suit and tie in most stories, sometimes a plain shirt with yellow trousers.
• The boots: tall and brown, laced up the front.

Everything else is free. The city scenes look lovely in soft blues and brick reds, the farm in greens and barn red, the kitchen in cheerful yellow and white.

Pages for little ones

George is a character for the very young: the books and the show are made for preschoolers, and so are many of these pages. The simplest keep him large with little or nothing around him. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• George smiling
• George standing tall
• George in the big hat

The busier pages fill the scene with city windows, grocery shelves, apples or books. Lots of detail begins with:

• At the grocery store
• In the library
• At the apple stand

What would George do next?

Each page is the middle of a story, which makes it a good prompt for a child who is learning to tell one. Ask before coloring: what did George just do, and what happens next? The toilet paper page, the spaghetti page and the balloons page all have an obvious "uh oh" coming. Once the page is done, a child can draw the next moment on the back: the Man coming home, the mess cleaned up, the balloons popped one by one. It is a gentle way to talk about curiosity, mistakes and making things right, which is exactly what the books do.

Printing a day with George

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so George and the big hat stay on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack gathers a whole afternoon of pages into one file. More monkeys are in the monkey coloring pages, and more gentle favorites for young children in the Daniel Tiger coloring pages, the Peppa Pig coloring pages and the Bluey coloring pages.