A Most Curious Book Report

A couple of days ago, I read the youngest boy noisykids a couple of bedtime books. I gave them the option of picking one book per boy (that would be three). I told them I would pick a book if they did not. Rather than listening to The Two Towers, the boys picked a book about a friendly fish, a dog driving a car, and a monkey who visited the hospital. None of them were asleep by the time the books were done, so I started into the second part of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy – beginning with the Library of Congress Information, the copyright, the warning not to ‘reproduce this book’

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

As I picked up before leaving the bedroom, the monkey book fell, and it fell apart along the spine. I noticed several pages that had been stuck together and covered by the lining of the back cover of the book. Gently, I pried the back cover of the book, and discovered quite a different version of the story I had just read to my sons. It was heavily marked with pencil and pen, as if a child had colored over some of the drawings.

I briefly summarize the story with a couple of pictures and comments. It shows another side of the authors of the monkey books.


Here is the cover:





























The monkey swallowed a piece from a jigsaw puzzle: “Before he knew, he had swallowed it”





















He visited the doctor, who recommended surgery to remove the puzzle piece.



















Here he is entering the hospital.







This is where the story went strange. The guy dressed in yellow did not seem that interested in his monkey companion.

Notice how, while the monkey is being swarmed by nurses.......

...the yellow guy is talking to the nurse: “It gets lonely out there, hunting wild animals in the jungle....”

This continues, for several pages: “You really are good with monkeys, ma’am. Have you ever thought of joining a lonely conservationist, studying the common monkey in the....”

“Oh, sir, you are too kind!”

Some were not as receptive to his attention: “I’m going to surgery. Can’t talk now.”

The yellow guy was jealous of all the attention the monkey received.

He asked the monkey’s doctor for advice. “Be yourself. Do not try to be someone you are not. And bathe. You smell like monkey – a wet monkey!”

It seemed to work, as his friendship with one nurse grew over time.

Sadly, it was not to be. When the monkey left the hospital, the nurse rushed out to the car to return the ring the yellow guy had given her.

“Goodbye,” she said, “I am sorry to break this to you like this, but....”

“I’m going to marry a doctor, because...

DOCTOR’S WIVES
HAVE
GLAMOROUS LIVES!”

Crushed, the yellow man took the monkey home, not realizing the monkey had opened up the box with the ring in it.

“Before he knew, he had swallowed it”

I found this book to be disturbing but also explained why the yellow guy never seems to be with anyone other than the monkey. Sometimes our work runs our lives, and we find ourselves living to work, not working to live.



dadwithnoisykids