Customer Reviews

Clifford's Riddles

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I bought this for my 4 year old and he didn't laugh once. He thought the zebra riddle was cute but the concept of most of the riddles doesn't make sense to him. He is very intelligent, but the terminology to most of the riddles don't speak to young children. Such as "Name two kinds of wood you would use if you made a statue of Clifford" answer: "Giant Redwood and Dogwood." Or, "What did Clifford do to get rid of dog pounds" answer: "He went on a diet." If you get the riddle it's cute, but I found most of the riddles to be dissapointing. Most younger children don't get puns or riddles altogether. My son and I read it twice, but it will probably go on the book shelf never to be read again. He loves Clifford, but this one just didn't add up.

I cannot look at this book without remembering our younger daughter laughing out loud and long as she happily recounted these riddles and their funny answers while looking at the hilarious illustrations. To me, this book is the essential Clifford!

To give you a flavor for the humor, here are a few examples:

"What is black and white and red all over? Clifford dressed up as a zebra."

"What is wet and pink and holds fifty cans of dog food? Clifford's tongue."<P...>As you can see, the lines themselves wouldn't crack up too many people. Add the illustrations though, and suddenly the laughter explodes!

In the case of our daughter, this led her to constantly seek out similar books at higher and higher reading levels as she got older. Few of the books she read as a child helped establish a long-term reading pattern as well as this one did.

After you finish enjoying this story, I suggest that you extend the fun by making up your own Clifford riddles and drawing illustrations for them.

Where do you write about Clifford? A big red play pen.