Our first “coming next year” of the year

AAUGH Blog reader Jeff pointed us to the announcement of The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Gang, and the Meaning of Life. This is an anthology of personal reflective essays on Peanuts, and they’ve got some heavy hitters in the line-up, including two major Jonathans (Lethem of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude fame and Franzen of The Corrections and Freedom), critic of music and ethics Chuck Klosterman, The Ice Storm‘s Rick Moody, Anywhere But Here‘s Mona Simpson, Bel Canto‘s Ann Patchett, and various other literary and critic-y names that I don’t feel like Wikipediating at the moment (Adam Gopnik, David Hajdu, Maira Kalman, Maxine Hong Kingston, Peter Kramer, Joe Queenan, George Saunders, Elissa Schappell, Sadie Stein, Amor Towles, David Ulin, Ann Moore… oh, wait, that last is And More.) The introduction is by David Michaelis, author of the best-selling biography Schulz and Peanuts and thus not the favorite guy in Schulz circles. Edited by Andrew Blauner, this is supposed to land on shelves and in Amazon boxes in 2019.

Upcoming releases
A book I’d not expected to resurface

Back in 2011, Schulz’s granddaughter Dena Hodges issued the first two chapters of  a memoir called In the Shadow of the Family Dog. As I noted in my review at the time, the chapter and the description of the project made it clear that the focus was her relationship with …

Upcoming releases
A box of squares

This May, Fantagraphics is collecting the various small square Peanuts books they’ve published into a new box set, Peanuts All Year Round Mini Collection. This includes: A Valentine for Charlie Brown — Valentine’s Day and romance strips Batter-Up Charlie Brown! — baseball strips Waiting for the Great Pumpkin — Halloween …

Upcoming releases
Game Day returns

Back in 2020, Fantagraphics dropped Game Day, a boxed set of sports-themes Peanuts strip reprint paperbackss, as a Costco exclusive. Next June it’s coming back, this time in hardcover and available through the usual sources. Designed as a Father’s Day gift, it should be good for anyone who likes Peanuts …