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Notations used in this guide:

* = There's a copy of this book in the AAUGH.com reference library.

(HB) = The copy in the reference library is a hardcover (may not be noted on books available solely in hardcover.)

CB = Charlie Brown

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The AAUGH blog:

Errors in Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz

Begun November 29th, 2001. October 11th, 2004 revision

Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz is a landmark book. It is the most beautifully designed Peanuts book ever, and reprints many, many strips that have not been in print in English since their original newspaper appearances. As such, it«s a book that Peanuts scholars are likely to look at for years to come.

Despite the best efforts of the writer/designer Chip Kidd, his editors, and the fine folks in charge of Peanuts products, a few errors and misleading statements crept into the hardback edition«s sparse text. Some of these were corrected in the expanded paperback edition, while new problematic statements were introduced. To keep future Peanuts scholars from being misled, here are the errors I know about (forgive the vague references to the locations of the errors, but the book«s pages are unnumbered):

Hardcover	Paperback
On the first page of Ford Falcon material: "...they formed a team that put together A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1964." Actually, A Charlie Brown Christmas was put together in 1965; the request for them to do an animated special came in April of that year. If you read it as saying that was just when they formed the team -- nope, the team was formed in 1963 working on a documentary.) Reference: A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making Of A Tradition, pages 11-14.	Fixed.
"Opposite: An undated sketch, probably from the mid-1960s, of an unusually retaliatory Linus." The indicated drawing appears to be a design sketch for the final panel of a mid-1950s strip, which can be found in any of the following books: Good Grief, More Peanuts (The Rinehart & Co or Holt Rinehart Winston edition, not the later Peanuts Classics version issued by Henry Holt.) Peanuts Parade 14: Always Stick Up For The Underbird Peanuts Double Volume #2 For The Love Of Peanuts	Fixed.
In the Li«l Folks section: "The seeds of Peanuts are all over this cartoon from 1948, as Charlie Brown sees print for the first time" -- the Li«l Folks reprinted is actually from 1949 (July 24), and "Charlie Brown" characters had previously appeared twice in 1948 (May 30, September 5) and once in 1949 (May 29) . It should be noted that this does not seem to be the same character from strip to strip, as he is drawn quite differently every time. Li«l Folks didn«t have continuing characters. (If any of these strips can be said to be the first appearance of the character we know of as Charlie Brown, it would be the May 29th one; the gag is the same as the first Peanuts daily!)	Fixed.
The list of Saturday Evening Post appearances includes one for April 19, 1950. That panel actually appeared on April 29, 1950. (Mike Marz gets the credit for noticing that one.)
The text has a repeated problem of identifying Sunday strips from 1952 as being from 1953. They do this first with the strip where Patty and Violet make a mud sandwich for Charlie Brown (thanks to Dave Carpented for catching that one), again with the one where the boys construct a building following the girl's orders.
There is one more 1952/1953 Sunday error, a Halloween strip	Fixed.
On that same page with the Halloween strip is the claim that Snoopy never actually spoke words. Around Christmas 1989, Snoopy (dressed as Santa) intoned "Who cares? Merry Christmas, Sweetie! Woof Woof Woof!" (and I don't think we can assume that this was meant to be a thought balloon; Snoopy is not one to think "woof woof woof".) This can be found on page 56 of Make Way For The King Of The Jungle. Also on the page is a description of an adjoining sketch as being probably from the mid-1950s; while that is true, we can be more precise, as it is pretty clearly a design sketch for the October 27th, 1954 strip.
A third error on that same page: Eagle-eyed Richard Ammons points out that the person in the pumpkin-head costume in the Halloween-themed October 26th, 1952 strip, which the text says "must be Charlie Brown", probably isn't. If you look at the character's shoes in the fifth panel, they appear to be MaryJanes, a girl's shoe style that Schulz sometimes used in the strip.
Also on the page is something that is not an error, but which can be made more precise: a description of an adjoining sketch as being probably from the mid-1950s. While that is true, it is pretty clearly a design sketch for the October 27th, 1954 strip, where Charlie Brown wears that very mask in the very odd manner.
The strip in which Lucy uses the word "neurotic" is from 1953, not 1954.
Attentive Ryan Mead points out that the description accompanying the six-page reprinting of the cloud-gazing strip misidentifies which Peanuts play this strips was incorporated into. It was not used in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown but it was in Snoopy: The Musical.
Misleading: On the colophon page near the end of the book, there«s a note that the illustrations on the preceding page were "Unfinished lettering and sketches found next to Schulz«s desk, July 2000". Some folks have taken this to mean that these were strips he was working on when health concerns interfered. I myself took it to mean that... until someone (handy reference guy Tim Chow) pointed out that the top one of the two strips was actually completed, and ran as the May 21, 1999 strip (Peanuts 2000, page 64); it looks as though Sparky wasn«t happy with the arrangement of the lettering in the first panel, and just restarted the strip on another piece of paper. I haven«t identified the second strip yet. Spike is wearing Mickey Mouse«s gloves in the final panel, an important clue. It may have been an unused gag, or it may not have. If it was used, it wasn«t used in the last three years of the strip. Spike makes reference to MM«s gloves on December 23, 1996 (thanks again to Tim for digging that up at my request), but that«s not the strip we see here. Given the history of strips about Spike getting Mickey Mouse«s shoes as gifts, I strongly believe it would be an immediately-post-Christmas strip, with Spike having received the gloves from MM. Or perhaps it was a strip originally intended for 1996 or not used... or even intended for 1999 but he changed his mind on it. In any case, it seems unlikely to me that this was an actively-in-progress strip when Sparky retired, as he had already done the Christmas strips for 1999 and would not yet be doing them for 2000.
	On the page picturing three Peanuts book covers, a publishing date of 1955 is given for More Peanuts. According to the copyright page of later editions of the book, the first printing was September, 1954.
	Misleading: The copy of Peanuts pictured on the same page as the above is probably not from 1952. It is certainly not a first printing of the book, as the first printing doesn't have the price printed on the cover (it was rubber-stamped onto the copies I've seen.)
	Misleading: The Rinehart series was indeed the first series of books reprinting the Peanuts strip. However, Good Ol' Charlie Brown was not the third book in the series. Good Grief, More Peanuts came earlier, published in 1956.

Do not let any of this prevent you from getting either version of this fine, fine book. Almost any book will have some errors in it, and as far as Peanuts-related errors, these are not egregious.

--Nat Gertler