Clifford the Big Red Dog feted on 50th birthday

This image released by Scholas­tic shows Nor­man Brid­well, cre­ator of Clif­ford the Big Red Dog, cel­e­brat­ing the character’s 50th anniver­sary at Scholastic’s head­quar­ters in New York,Monday. (Cour­tesy | Scholas­tic, Stu­art Ramson)

LEANNE ITALIE

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — School kids sang “Happy Birth­day” and Scholas­tic unfurled a huge ban­ner wor­thy of a big red dog from the roof of its head­quar­ters Mon­day to fete Clif­ford, the beloved book and TV char­ac­ter, for his 50 years of nudg­ing kids to read.

His cre­ator, 84-year-old Nor­man Brid­well, took ques­tions from a few dozen first– and second-graders dur­ing a web­cast beamed live into more than 5,000 class­rooms around the coun­try from the party held out­side the down­town build­ing as tourists snapped pho­tos from atop open-air double-decker buses stuck in traffic.

And Bridwell’s real-life daugh­ter, the all-grown-up Emily Eliz­a­beth, spoke to reporters of her spe­cial place in pub­lish­ing his­tory as the inspi­ra­tion for the perky, blond girl who shares her life — and 90 books worth of adven­tures — with the gawky, big-hearted Clifford.

She was just a year old when her father, a strug­gling artist from Indi­ana, and his wife, aptly named Norma, were try­ing to eke out a liv­ing in New York. It wasn’t going well when Norma sug­gested he try his hand at illus­trat­ing children’s books.

Norma came up with the name Clif­ford, based on an imag­i­nary friend she had as a girl.

But Bridwell’s 10 paint­ings for kids were roundly rejected. One staffer at a pub­lisher told him if he wanted to work on children’s books, he’d have to write one of his own.

His story even­tu­ally landed at Scholas­tic at a time the com­pany was just start­ing in the trade fic­tion mar­ket. Clif­ford is now one of Scholastic’s most suc­cess­ful endeav­ors, with more than 126 mil­lion copies in print in 13 lan­guages, a TV show and a mul­ti­tude of products.

“I remem­ber my mother was vis­it­ing from Indi­ana,” Brid­well said, loung­ing in a chair and munch­ing some fruit after the festivities.

“The baby had been cry­ing all night and this woman called from Scholas­tic and said we’ve got this book here, ‘Clif­ford the Big Red Dog.’ We’d like to pub­lish it. I never expected it to be accepted. My wife said after the first book, ‘Well, you could do more of these,’ and I said, ‘Don’t count on it. This is just a fluke.’”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a fan. He declared Mon­day as Clif­ford the Big Red Dog Day, though he wasn’t on hand for the party.

Brid­well, who lives on Martha’s Vine­yard in Mass­a­chu­setts, had a sim­ple vision when he dreamed up Clif­ford: He wanted to write about a dog as big as a horse. What he wound up with is a dog big­ger than a house who shared some of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of kids. Clif­ford hap­pens to be red because that’s the color of the jar of paint Brid­well had nearby.

“I don’t really under­stand it,” he said of Clifford’s endur­ing nature. “Whether it’s his color, or if it’s the fact that he’s clumsy, like a lot of kids are clumsy. And a lot of kids would like to be for­given for their mis­takes, and Emily always for­gives him when he makes a mistake.”

Brid­well had no par­tic­u­lar teach­able moment in mind. He just wanted to enter­tain kids. Later, Scholas­tic gave Clif­ford “10 Big Ideas” that include mat­ters of human and dog decency: shar­ing, respect, believ­ing in one­self and help­ing oth­ers among them.

“I said to my edi­tor, I think after about the sec­ond or third book, ‘Maybe I should be putting mes­sages into this.’ And she said, ‘Well you’re not a mes­sage per­son. Just give them some­thing that’s fun to read.”

At the time, 1962, recalled Norma, paper­back children’s books weren’t so easy to find, and “a lot of kids couldn’t have books because they were too expensive.”

For her part, the 51-year-old Emily Eliz­a­beth of Carlisle, Mass., cites Clif­ford as part of the rea­son she became a preschool teacher.

“As I got older and as I started to meet par­ents who really loved the books, they would express to me how much they meant to their fam­ily and how much they meant to their chil­dren. Then I started to real­ize it was some­thing special.”

Bridwell’s grand­daugh­ter, 17-year-old Alissa, also attended the party. She thought the Clif­ford sto­ries were just for her grow­ing up.

“I didn’t get that every­body else had them, too,” she said. “I thought it was just this spe­cial thing between me and my grandpa.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.