Clifford manages to help out at a circus with a minimum of chaos and destruction, but the final rescue is breathtakingly ridiculous, starting with the fact that apparently the grand finale of the circus was for the audience to shuffle out of the tent and watch the ringmaster rise in a tethered hot-air balloon. ( )

clifford helps the circus: he gets the tigers to listen, dresses up as a clown, leads the elephants, and helps the human cannon ball. clifford ended up making it the best circus ever.
3 book

I liked this book for a few reasons. First the illustrations match the themes of the book that it is supposed to be silly. The reactions and things that Clifford does in the book make it more fun for the readers and make the book more interesting. The other reason is that the plot is interesting and fun. The book is about a circus and there are different situations that Emily and Clifford go through that are about being in the circus and having fun doing the different activities, like when Clifford was a clown and had pies thrown at him. The book overall was made for a fun story about a circus and also helping others can be fun. I have always loved Clifford and read a lot of the different books. ( )

Ha ha, I reviewed all those other Clifford books and this one was soooooo memorable that I forgot even to add it. Okay, but let me try and explain better why I got no love for Clifford. It's like, here's him and his kid, Emily Elizabeth, see that the circus is coming to town and a bunch of circus clowns and animals quit and the circus needs their help. So two points here: 1) everyone always needs Clifford's help. We are a bunch of Emily Elizabeths who can't be trusted to cross the street by ourselves and need the strong paw of Clifford to keep us safe, forever. There's something so totally non-consensual about everything Clifford does. And 2) most kids' books would have had Clifford go through the wrong door and end up on stage or maybe one of the elephants gets sick (that actually does happen, in this one) and crazy times would unfold in anarchic fashion. But here it's like, no, everyone quit their jobs, evoking abusive bosses, the unemployment line, and so Clifford and Emily Elizabeth gotta bust their goddamn humps all day. It is needlessly prosaic and once again betrays this aggrieved everyone-wants-something-what-would-you-do-without-me tone.

So Clifford starts out by sorting out the zoo animals, who are wild creatures being forced to perform for our amusement and who are refusing to work--it doesn't take much to see tht they're organizing to demand better working conditions, taking collective action as is their right, if you read between the lines a little here people! And on page 3 Clifford comes in to break their strike: the way he's drawn is sheerest nightmares, 26 feet of pure muscle hunched over and mookish like a Pinkertons' mascot grown large on baby's blood, the dark patronus of the Special Constabulary, and that look on his face is chilling--doggy lips curled in a too-human smile, eyebrows fierce: "Come get some. I'll feast on your entrails." And the animals snap into line, and return to their bondage.

Order restored in his kingdom (p.s. the world is his kingdom), Clifford goes on to play all the roles in the circus (isn't Clifford special wecial! What a doggy woggy woggy! What a big funny guy!), and this is less offensive but there's still this alternation between undeniable edgy discomfort and the deepest puerility: first he goes out with the clowns and they are doing their clown thing and hitting each other with pies and Clifford wags his tail one time and the pie wagon and all the clowns go flying and it is only pure luck that nobody was flung into a post headfirst or crushed by 800 pounds of pie wagon, to die gagging on a hideous paste made up of boysenberry filling, clown makeup and their own tears. But Clifford don't give a fuck. And then next thing he's walking the tight rope and it's all "ha ha, that silly doggy woggy is too big for the tightrope and it is on the floor!"

Then Emily Elizabeth has a mishap and gets stranded in the hot air balloon, and Clifford needs Emily Elizabeth because it's his putative role as her big lovable puppy that makes the world treat him as benign and not a threat on the level of Gojira or Yog-Sothoth, so he gets a tent peg and fires it at the balloon using the power lines as a kind of elastic (because what does he care if he breaks them, he gets +5 against electrical attacks, fuck everybody else; also, let it be noted, the fact that he can accomplish this task clearly betrays that he has unnaturally dextrous humanlike hands and not paws). It's like, either he saves the child or he misses the balloon part and nails the basket and she and the circus balloon man die in a flash of pulped flesh and wicker, and if so, hey, win some you lose some, and Clifford loves carnage so it's all good.

These are the highlights but it's all like this. It's like, there are two strains that are uncomfortable individually and make something really monstrous when they come together: the one where Clifford is omnicompetent and the rest of us are his charges, to be protected capriciously, restrained for our own protection, and perhaps murdered if we dare to walk away from him; and the one where he's our jolly goofy friend. He's always fucking up, which is weird for such a smart dog, or is it on purpose--he drinks the high diver's pool of water but then saves him at the last second when he sticks out his tongue and the dude lands on it and everyone laughs in whimsy and relief and fear. It's like he's simultaneously the kind of dog owner who thinks the way to train a dog is with choke chains and barking at them when they do wrong (I know actual humans who have done this) and letting them know who's the fucking "pack alpha," and the abused and snarling puppy who you think is your buddy until he rips off your face (I know this actual dog too, unfortunately--guess which actual humans he's owned by?).

Crucially, there are moments like this in all the books. Maybe I just don't get dog people, but it seems to me that basically Clifford is the Ouroboros of naked power relations, embodying within him their recursive and totalitarian nature, and that's something that even adults should not do too much thinking about unless they're feeling really okay that day, let alone something we should let kids absorb with their mother's milk. ( )

Clifford at the Circus by Norman Bridwell
This audio book has first section with turn page signals. Second half is without the signals.
Emily Elizabeth is the reader and she tells the story. This book is about how Clifford her dog goes to the circus with her.
They see many things there : a sign asking for help. She and Clifford apply for the job to help them put the show on.
She tells of the problems with the animals and Clifford solves that problem. Clowns needed to be trained as some had quit.
Clifford helps again. Story tells of other problems and how they fix them up so the show will go on. The sights and sounds of the circus feel very real.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device). ( )