Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Worksheet Download

Can you picture a reindeer with a glowing red nose? That is Rudolph, the star of a famous story. His nose shines bright, like a tiny red lamp.

That bright idea came from a man named Robert May. He worked at a department store, a big shop with many parts. In 1939, he wrote the story as a little book for children.

The store gave the books away, and millions of copies went home! Robert's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, turned the tale into a song in 1949. Today, kids still sing about that little glowing nose!

Wow, imagine a reindeer whose nose glows bright red like a tiny lamp! That is Rudolph, star of a story more than 80 years old. Did you know he began in a little booklet, not a song?

The booklet was written in 1939 by Robert L. May, who worked at a department store, a big shop with many kinds of things. His store, Montgomery Ward in Chicago, wanted a free Christmas gift for children, so Robert wrote a new story. He told it in rhyme, and his daughter Barbara loved it.

Free gifts are hard to resist, and children loved this one! The store gave away millions of copies over the years. In the tale, other reindeer laughed at Rudolph's shiny nose, but it helped on a foggy Christmas Eve.

Everyone loved that tale, and Robert's brother-in-law, musician Johnny Marks, turned it into a song in 1949. Cowboy singer Gene Autry recorded it, and soon everyone sang along. Just think: a free booklet from a Chicago store grew into a song you can hum today!

Imagine you are a child in Chicago in 1939, shopping at a big department store just before Christmas. A department store is a giant shop with many sections, each selling something different. A friendly worker hands you a small booklet with a young reindeer on the cover, and his nose glows bright red! Inside, the story is written in rhyme, so it sounds almost like a song.

That rhyming tale came from Robert L. May, who wrote advertisements for the store, which was called Montgomery Ward. The store wanted a free booklet for children at Christmas, so May was asked to write one. He dreamed up a reindeer named Rudolph with a glowing red nose. He shared the story with his young daughter, Barbara, and she loved it.

Was Barbara the only child who loved it? Not even close! In that first Christmas, more than two million copies went home with shoppers. Millions more were printed in later years. People kept asking for the story, so it soon traveled far beyond one store.

One new way to share it came from May's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, a songwriter. A brother-in-law joins your family by marriage, like the husband of your sister. In 1949, Marks turned the story into a song, and singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded it that same year. A booklet handed out in a store in 1939 became a song that families still sing every December!

Picture a chilly December day in 1939 in Chicago, Illinois. Inside a giant department store called Montgomery Ward, children in wool coats and mittens wait in a long line to visit Santa Claus. Each child walks away with a small booklet, and on the cover is a young reindeer with a nose that glows bright red! The story inside is told in rhyme, so it bounces along almost like a song.

That bouncy rhyme came from Robert L. May, a writer who worked at the store. The store wanted its own Christmas booklet to give away, so May got the job. He tried out his ideas on his young daughter, Barbara, who loved the glowing-nose reindeer. Can you guess what he first thought of calling the hero? Rollo and Reginald were on his list of names!

Rollo and Reginald may sound silly for a reindeer, but Rudolph is the name that stuck. In the tale, the young reindeer's shining nose makes the other reindeer laugh at him. Then a thick fog rolls in on Christmas Eve, and Santa needs someone to light the way. The glowing nose that once got teased becomes the very thing that saves the night!

That happy ending was hard to forget, and children carried the booklet home by the millions. In that first Christmas season, the store gave away more than two million copies. That is a lot of bedtime stories! The store printed the booklet again in 1946, and millions more children got to meet the glowing-nosed reindeer.

That famous nose was ready to be sung about, and May's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, was the man for the job. Marks, a songwriter, turned the story into a song in 1949. Gene Autry, a famous singing cowboy, recorded it, and millions of people bought the record. So the next time you hear the song, remember that Rudolph started out in a booklet, and almost had a very different name!

Here is a puzzle for you: who first dreamed up a reindeer whose nose glows like a bright red lantern? You might guess the answer hides in some ancient folktale, but this shining hero has a much newer birthday! He is a young reindeer with a warm, glowing nose that can light up a dark, foggy night. The clues lead to a busy department store in Chicago, Illinois, and to the year 1939, when your great-grandparents may have been children.

That store was Montgomery Ward, and its holiday plans are where the mystery really begins. Every December, children visited Santa Claus at its stores, and the company liked to hand each child a small gift. In earlier years it had bought ready-made coloring books to give away, but this time it decided to create its own booklet and save money. The job of writing it went to Robert L. May, a young advertising writer who worked for the store.

Every writer needs a first audience, and May found his in his young daughter, Barbara. He wanted a hero who stands out from the crowd, and he told the tale in rhyme, like a long poem. He even tried the names Rollo and Reginald before choosing Rudolph, so the famous song might have sounded quite different! In the story, the young reindeer is teased about his glowing nose until a foggy Christmas Eve, when that bright nose turns out to be exactly what Santa needs.

That glowing idea lit up more than a foggy night, because children loved the booklet. Millions of copies were given away, and the store printed it again in 1946. Then came a generous surprise: in 1947, the company gave May the rights to his own story. Owning the rights meant he could share Rudolph in new ways, far beyond one store's Santa visits.

One of those new ways came from close to home, since songwriter Johnny Marks was May's brother-in-law. Marks turned the story into a song in 1949, and the singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded it that same year. Songs travel on radio waves and records, so the tale soon reached homes far from Chicago. Think about it: a booklet written for a store's Santa visits and first told to a little girl named Barbara grew into one of the best-known Christmas songs.

Ask a friend how long Rudolph has been part of Christmas stories, and you might hear, "Forever!" The truth is a plot twist. The famous poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," published in 1823, names eight reindeer, and Rudolph is not one of them. Picture a young reindeer with a nose that glows cherry red, like a tiny traffic light shining through a snowy night. This glowing character is roughly as old as some of your great-grandparents, and he was born in the most unlikely place: a department store's advertising office.

That department store was Montgomery Ward in Chicago, and in 1939 it wanted a special Christmas gift for young shoppers. Robert L. May, a writer in its advertising department, was asked to create a story booklet that the store could hand out to children. The company had been buying coloring books to give away, so writing its own booklet was a clever way to save money. May chose rhyming verse, much like the 1823 poem, and, as the tale is often told, he read early versions to his young daughter, Barbara. He also weighed other names, such as Rollo and Reginald, before landing on Rudolph.

Rudolph turned out to be a winning name, but it was the story that made children hang on every word. The tale follows a young reindeer whose glowing nose makes him a target for teasing, so he feels out of place among the herd. Then a foggy Christmas Eve arrives, and the very feature that once made him feel different becomes the light everyone needs. Children loved it: the store gave away more than 2 million copies in 1939, according to histories of the company. When Montgomery Ward printed it again in 1946, millions more booklets went home with families.

With millions of booklets in children's hands, Rudolph was ready for a new act: music. In 1947, Montgomery Ward gave May the rights to his own story, which meant the reindeer was free to travel beyond the store. May's brother-in-law, a songwriter named Johnny Marks, turned the tale into a song in 1949. When singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded it, the tune became a huge hit, and chances are you have hummed it yourself. Later, in 1964, the character took another leap when a TV special brought him to life using stop-motion puppets.

Those puppets still appear on screens each December, and the song still drifts through stores and living rooms. In my view, the secret is the idea at its heart: something that makes you stand out may be the very thing that lets you shine. May's booklet proves a good idea can start small, with one writer at a desk in Chicago. Think of it: a booklet that began as a department store giveaway in 1939 now lights up the holidays, just as its hero's nose lights up the fog.

More than two million free booklets: that is how many copies of one story a Chicago department store handed out in 1939! Its hero was a young reindeer whose nose glowed bright red, like a tiny lantern in the dark. The other reindeer teased him about it, and he felt like the odd one out. Then came a foggy Christmas Eve when Santa needed help finding the way, and that glow was suddenly exactly what everyone needed. You know him as Rudolph, but the tale of who invented him involves a store, a writer, and a very tight budget.

That writer was Robert L. May, who wrote advertisements for the Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago. Each year the store gave children who visited Santa a coloring book, but this year it wanted to save money with a booklet of its own. May got the job, and he chose to write about an outsider, perhaps because he had been a small, shy boy who knew how being left out felt. He wrote in rhyming verse, with the same bouncing rhythm as the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas." His boss worried that a red nose might not look cheerful, until May's artist friend Denver Gillen sketched a friendly-faced reindeer that won him over.

Once the boss was won over, May faced a smaller puzzle: what to call his hero. He tried names such as Rollo and Reginald before settling on Rudolph. At home, May was looking after his young daughter, Barbara, while his wife, Evelyn, was seriously ill. He is said to have tried the story out on Barbara first, and her delight helped him believe it was a keeper. A story tested on one little girl was about to reach children across the country.

Across the country, those booklets kept disappearing into small hands, and the demand did not fade after that first season. In 1946 the store printed the story again, and it gave away millions more copies. In 1947, Montgomery Ward's president made a remarkably generous move by giving the rights to the story to May himself. That decision let May publish Rudolph as a regular book and let others turn it into new forms. Soon, a member of his own family would give the tale a tune.

That family member was Johnny Marks, a songwriter who was married to May's sister. Marks turned the story into a song, and in 1949 the singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded it. The song became a holiday hit, which shows how an idea can change when it travels from page to sound. A booklet could only reach children who visited a store, but a record could drift out of any radio or living room. Marks kept the heart of May's tale, yet he squeezed it into a few short verses and a chorus anyone could sing along with.

Once people were humming the tune, the reindeer with the glowing nose was ready for the screen. In 1964 a television special used stop-motion figures, models moved a tiny bit at a time and photographed, to bring the story to life. It has been shown on TV for many holiday seasons since. Each new version, from booklet to song to special, changed the tale a little while keeping its heart: a hero whose difference becomes his gift. Not bad for a story that began as a free giveaway for children waiting to visit Santa, written by an advertising writer on a budget.

In 1939, a Chicago advertising writer named Robert L. May got an assignment that sounds like a dare: invent a Christmas story that a department store could hand to children for free. May worked for Montgomery Ward, a giant retailer famous for its mail-order catalog, and his bosses wanted something special for shoppers' families. What he dreamed up was a young reindeer with a nose that glowed red, like a tiny lantern shining through a foggy night. The other reindeer in the tale teased him for it, and the story asks a sharp question: could the very thing that makes you stand out become your greatest strength? That question, more than the glow itself, helps explain why a giveaway booklet outlived the season it was made for.

That question did not come from nowhere, because May knew exactly what it felt like to be the small one who gets teased. He later said his own childhood shaped the tale, and accounts of its origin add that his young daughter Barbara loved the reindeer at a Chicago zoo. The store had been buying coloring books from a publisher to give away each year, so making its own booklet was a fresh way to hand out a gift. May reportedly tried other names for his hero, such as Rollo and Reginald, before settling on Rudolph. Can you picture a song called "Reginald the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? It just doesn't glow the same.

Once his hero had a name, May gave the story a beat that would feel like Christmas to any listener: rhyme. His verses bounce along in a rhythm that echoes "A Visit from St. Nicholas," the poem first published anonymously in 1823 and now known to most people as "The Night Before Christmas." That older poem is usually credited to Clement Clarke Moore, though some scholars argue that Henry Livingston Jr. wrote it, so even the model for May's rhythm has a debate attached. Either way, the poem had already made a team of eight named reindeer familiar to families. Rudolph arrived 116 years later, which makes him a latecomer whose story succeeded by joining an old tradition rather than replacing it.

A catchy rhythm helps a story travel, but being free helps it travel even faster. Widely repeated figures say that Montgomery Ward gave away about 2.4 million copies in that first Christmas season, enough to hand one to every student in nearly 100,000 classrooms of 25. The pages told of a foggy Christmas Eve when Santa needed a guide, and the young reindeer's glowing nose lit the way, while artist Denver Gillen's pictures let children see that glow. Printing slowed during the wartime years, when paper was hard to get, but the booklet came back in 1946, and millions more copies went out.

Rudolph's story was still spreading in booklets when a songwriter named Johnny Marks, who happened to be May's brother-in-law, heard music in it. Marks was married to May's sister, Margaret, so the idea stayed in the family. In 1949 he turned the tale into a song, and singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded it that year, turning it into a hit. Notice what the song does: it squeezes a whole booklet into a few verses, keeping the teasing, the foggy Christmas Eve and the moment when a glowing nose becomes a gift. Marks went on to write other holiday favorites, including "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas."

A song that returns to the radio every December keeps sending listeners back toward the story that began it. In 1947, Montgomery Ward had given May the rights to his tale, which meant he could publish it himself and let it grow beyond the store. In 1964, a television special brought the reindeer to life with puppet animation, and it has returned to television nearly every holiday season since. Each retelling changes a detail here or there, yet the heart stays the same: someone teased for being different ends up helping everyone. Think of it: a free booklet, written for a store's Christmas giveaway in 1939, gave the world a hero whose whole message is that the thing others teased might be the light everyone needed.