Take a look at Mithril. People are frequently surprised by its small learning curve (and for many, the majority of the learning is for knowledge that you can go and apply outside of Mithril)
For learning, what you really want is a small set of new concepts to learn that easily map to things you are already familiar with, good documentation to refer to, and a active community that can answer your questions within a couple of minutes. That's why I mentioned Mithril.
I'd be quite keen to look at either refactoring to use mithril or react, so will check you blog post - thanks!