Quinlan B. Lee

It's Christmas Eve, and Clifford the Small Red Dog is worried because he doesn't have a Christmas present for Emily Elizabeth. The one he does end up giving is corny, so the sooner forgotten the better.

I'm much more interested in what crappy thing her father, Mark Howard, must have done that he is giving his wife a big, fancy necklace. Is Clifford not the only dog in the family? Is there another reason the family has to relocate to Birdwell Island in the near future other than Clifford's show more size? Hmmmm.

Actually, the most interesting thing about this book is my daughter never bothered to do the stickers when she got this at six years old, so she tried to do it this year at twenty-two and had trouble with the tricky placement required to get the secret correct answers that the sticker designer built into the book. Some stickers took several minutes of analysis and discussion about perspective and required conjecture about the creator's intentions. Oh my. show less

Little ones can help the Care Bears get ready for Christmas by using the included stickers to decorate each page.

Once that's done, they'll never want to look at this boring nothingburger of a story ever again. My daughter didn't.

Side Note: A lot of bookstores attribute this story to writer Quinlan B. Lee and illustrator Jay Johnson, but my copy of the book mentions no creators except interior designer Amy Heinrich and cover designer John Daly. Does anyone know where the Lee and Johnson show more information comes from?

FOR REFERENCE:

Rated “Indifferent" in our old book database by Rod and Adelia. show less

It's puppy Clifford's first Christmas and he is very confused by all the decorating and celebrating. And then Mr. Howard cruelly endangers him by sticking Clifford on the top of the Christmas tree. That's some poor judgement.

We will be revisiting all of these starter books...they tiny stories engaged my pre-reader and the practice words on each book were a great supplement to his speech therapy.