Reviewlet: Peanuts birthday book

Sometimes, it seems a waste to write a whole new review. So as my review for the pretty gift book Good Grief, It’s Your Birthday, just reread my earlier review of Don’t Give Up, Charlie Brown. It’s largely the same thing – Peanuts art and thematic quotes, although this time the theme is birthdays. The biggest difference is that they actually include some Peanuts strips with the word balloons intact this time, although the topic of the strip is sometimes only tangentially related to birthdays. It even has some of the same flaws of citing someone quoting an earlier quote as the source of the quote… and thus actor Christian Slater is credited with a saying more rightly attributed to Mullah Nasrudin in the 13th century. (Yeah, I always get those two confused, too.)

New releases
A pop-up shows up

Here Comes Charlie Brown!: A Peanuts Pop-up, Gene Kannenberg, Jr.’s adaptation of the very first Peanuts strip, is not the first Peanuts book to reprint only a single strip. There was at least one board book that did much the same thing. However, that board book was, at heart, a …

Classic finds
English Phrases to Comfort Your Heart

The next book in my Amazon Japan shipment falls into the adorable category of “Peanuts used to explain American culture”. English Phrases to Comfort Your Heart with Snoopy by Nobu Yamada falls into that category. It also falls into the category of “books which are meant to be destroyed”, as each …

New releases
Look! A mook!

Mooks – that is, items with magazine-like content but sold more like a book – are popular in Japan. Many of them come bundled with extra items, and there have been a fair number with Peanuts items. Most often these are bags – a handbag or a tote of some …