Clifford the Small Red Puppy by Norman Bridwell

(Graded Reader)

Another book not designed for ESL, but that worked pretty well in the ESL classroom.

And another book that I of course remember well from my own childhood.

...although it turns out, I had slightly mis-remembered it.  I had thought that the original Clifford story charted his growth from a puppy to an enormous dog.  But when I came to try to adapt these books, I discovered (or was reminded) that the original 1963 book starts off with Clifford already as a huge dog, and just documents all the trouble that Clifford gets himself into.  No attempt to explain Clifford's origin is present in the first book.

This book, which came out in 1972, is actually the sixth book in the series.
As such, it starts out assuming the readers are already familiar with Clifford the big red dog, and doesn't try to make any suspense in the narrative.  The book starts with pictures showing Clifford as a huge dog, and then flashbacks to his puppy days.
For my Vietnamese students, who were completely unfamiliar with this character, I found it more interesting to at first omit pictures of the big Clifford.   That way his transformation into a big dog would be more of a surprise, and more interesting.

This book is available on amazon.com here.

Here are some supplementary teaching materials I made when teaching this book in my classes.  These materials don't really work too well independently of the actual book, so you'll need to get a copy of the book to use these.

Slideshow: 1. (slides, pub) 2. (slides, pub), Complete (slides, pub)

Worksheet: 1. (drive, docs, pub)  2. (drive, docs, pub)

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Poverty and Inequality in America