Review: The Making of a Great Pumpkin

Years ago, I was hired to write a biography of race car driver Richard Petty in comic book form. Problem was, the publisher had already published two Richard Petty biographies, so my job was to find things that hadn’t been covered in the first two issues, so that all three could be combined (with some additional pages) into a single graphic novel at some later date (a date which never came, as it happened.)

I’d like to think that I did a pretty good job, given the circumstances. Still, the book was a mishmash of unrelated smaller stories, and I expect to the uninvolved reader, it felt a bit like filler material.

Great Pumpkin coverIt’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”: The Making of a Television Classic has much the same effect. Released for the 40th anniversary of the original special, it’s a follow-up to “A Charlie Brown Christmas”: The Making of a Tradition, which carried text about the making of the first Peanuts special, with shots of production materials, and then a pictures-and-dialog “script” of the end result. This new volume follows that same format. The problem is, there isn’t that much to tell about the making of this special that varies from the previous special; there are a few specific and interesting anecdotes, and some more general discussion of how the Peanuts specials were made that either overlaps with the previous book or feels like lets-throw-anything-in-here filler.

So if you have an interest in how the Peanuts specials were made, get the first book. You should get this new book only if you feel a particularly affinity to this particular TV special, or if you’ve already read the first book and feel that you want more.

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 …

New releases
Bringing up the rear

I’m interrupting my coverage of the shipment of books I got from Japan to cover another foreign book that just arrived. Now, I don’t try to collect every foreign Peanuts book. My collection is out of control as it is. I try to find books in languages that I don’t …