The AAUGH blog

* ANOTHER EDITION I CAN’T OFFER YOU

* SCHULZ COLLABORATOR INTERVIEW ONLINE

* REVIEW: A PEANUTS CHRISTMAS

* BEWARE THE CHRISTMAS FLEECE

* IT’S A HARDCOVER, CHARLIE BROWN

ANOTHER EDITION I CAN’T OFFER YOU

Barnes & Noble has published a new paperback edition of
PEANUTS TREASURY, a collection of primo strips that was
first offered in 1968. The book appears to be available
only through Barnes & Noble stores — at this point,
it’s not even on their website. But that doesn’t bother
me much, because the new edition has a cover price of
$9.95, but through AAUGH.com you can still get the
hardcover edition from 2000 for a mere *three cents*
more. The reproduction (in all editions, even the original)
is a bit weak, but the quality and quantity of strips
makes it the best bargain in the store. To check it out, go
to:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?1586630687

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SCHULZ COLLABORATOR INTERVIEW ONLINE

Derrick Bang has taken the interview he did with former
Schulz assistant Jim Sasseville for CBG, expanded it some, and
put it on the web. Sasseville worked on the Peanuts comic
books and on Schulz’s little-known strip It’s Only A Game.
Check it out at:

http://www.peanutscollectorclub.com/sassevil.html

And while you’re at it, you may want to look at my interview
with Sasseville’s fellow assistant Dale Hale, at:

http://AAUGH.com/guide/ldale.htm

————————————————————-

REVIEW: A PEANUTS CHRISTMAS

There are two ways to look at the new strip collection A
PEANUTS CHRISTMAS: as the book it is, and as the book it
claims to be. Let me tackle that second way first.

As I announced months ago, the book jacket of A Peanuts
Christmas describes it as being “the complete collection
of Christmas strips from 1950 to 1999″. This fails in a
couple ways. The first is more of a quibble: the book
contains no strips from 1950.

The second concern is meatier: the book is not complete.
Yes, it has hundreds of Christmas-themed strips. However,
there are also Christmas-themed strips that it doesn’t
have. In fact, grabbing the sweet little book A Joy Of A
Peanuts Christmas that Hallmark put out in 2000, I find
18 legitimately Christmas-themed strips there that aren’t
in A Peanuts Christmas, and I have to believe there are
a fair number of Christmas strips that didn’t make it
into either book (and, in fact, other fans are already
pointing out missing Christmas storylines.)

And yet, if one looks at the book as what it is, a
collection of Christmas strips, it’s good but not
exceptional. In their drive to collect strips about
Christmas, the editors include some strips that are
only vaguely related to Christmas (such as strips about
writing book reports over Christmas vacation), often
running the one Christmas-mentioning strip from a
longer storyline.

Any book that prints hundreds of Peanuts strips
clearly is a good thing, and there is a lot of fine
material in this. The entire book is printed in
color, but in almost all cases the color is on
the page background or on decorative design elements,
not on the strips themselves. The only strips that
are reprinted in color are Sunday strips from 1996
onward — in other words, strips that the same
publisher (Ballantine Books) has already reprinted
in color in their primary strip reprint series.
(And no, they didn’t include the color versions of
the dailies that they had run in some of those books.)

A couple of repeated strips also reflect some
editorial sloppiness. The Christmas Day, 1990 strip
on page 74 is repeated on page 77, where the
Christmas Day 1991 strip should likely have been.
More understandable is the December 20th, 1987
Sunday strip which appears in black and white on
page 101, then appears in color on page 148. This
was a strip that was rerun during Schulz’s 1997
vacation

On the up side, the strips are in order by date, with
the copyright and date markings left intact, which
is handy for those of us who study Peanuts history.
The book does include strips that I don’t think I’ve
ever seen before, ones that are likely in no other
book.

I wouldn’t recommend this book as a Christmas present,
simply because people’s enthusiasm for Christmas things
seems to end with Christmas Day itself; they may not
want to be reading Christmas-themed strips in the days
following. However, it should make a nice book to leave
on your coffee table during the Christmas season. Its
cover is attractive (even if surprisingly similar to the
A Joy Of A Peanuts Christmas book) and the strips are
good to flip through and read a bit at a time. (The
constant Christmas theme does make some of them feel
redundant if the book is read all at once.)

A PEANUTS CHRISTMAS is a 156-page full color dust jacketed
hardcover book, 9″x11.5″. It has a cover price of $25.95,
but you can slash more than seven bucks off of that price
by ordering it through:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0345453514

————————————————————-

BEWARE THE CHRISTMAS FLEECE

I know I’ve said this before, but with the holidays
coming and people eager to find that special gift,
I need to say it again: *Don’t* buy Schulz-autographed
goods on online auctions. The commercial autograph
is rife with fraud; some studies have shown that *most*
of the major sports star autographs sold are fraudulent,
and there’s little reason to believe that other categories
of valuable autographs are any different. (I’ve also
seen a fair number of dubious “Schulz” sketches lately.)

At this moment, I am monitoring an online auction of a
Schulz-signed copy of the 2000 edition of Peanuts
Treasury (with Certificate Of Authenticity!), a book
that was not issued until after Schulz had died. Even if
copies had been printed before Schulz passed, a man
suffering from the multiple ailments that Schulz faced
was not likely to have had either the ability or the
desire to scrawl recognizable generic signatures for
adoring auctioneers.

Does that mean that all Schulz signatures are fraudulent?
Of course not. But don’t expect all frauds to be as
blatant as this. And if you want to get your loved ones
something that only looks like it was signed by Schulz,
you might as well save money and forge it yourself!

An autograph can be a cool momento of your having met
someone interesting, or it can be a way to make a
book that you buy as a gift something special, showing
that you were willing to go to a little extra effort
for the recipient. But when you start stepping away from
such sentimental value and get involved in supposed
financial value of a signature, you’re dealing in a
realm fueled by illusion. If you want a valuable
signature, get it on the bottom of a check.

————————————————————-

IT’S A HARDCOVER, CHARLIE BROWN

The special gift edition of the kids book adaptation of
A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS is now shipping. I announced
this as a hardcover edition with a CD of music from
the special. However, if you saw the listing for the book
that Amazon put up, you’d learn that it was a paperback.

Amazon is wrong. The book is a hardcover. Order lots.

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689853572

————————————————————-

Well, that’s all the rants and raves for now. As ever,
there will be a new newsletter when there’s enough new
news for a new newsletter.

Have a happy Halloween, and keep sending me your notes,
quotes, jokes, pokes, and new email addresses!

–Nat, nat@AAUGH.com

Proprietor

http://AAUGH.com

In this issue:

* DOUBLE CHRISTMAS DELIVERY

* GOOD OL’ SCOOPY

* PREORDER YOUR VALENTINE NOW

* REVIEW: SNOOPY’S GUIDE TO THE WRITING LIFE

* HOW BIG IS YOUR BOOK?

DOUBLE CHRISTMAS DELIVERY

This year’s two Christmas-themed Peanuts books are now
shipping. A PEANUTS CHRISTMAS, a large 192 page hardcover
which collects Christmas-themed Peanuts strips from the
feature’s entire run, is probably of more interest to
most of you. It can be found at

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0345453514

Also now shipping is the deluxe version of the kids
adaptation of the classic TV special A CHARLIE BROWN
CHRISTMAS. This new edition comes with a CD with
tunes from the special.

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689853572

……………………………………………………

GOOD OL’ SCOOPY

According to the excerpt on the website for Little Simon,
the publishing imprint putting out the A Charlie Brown
Christmas book, the text includes the line:

“Everyone laughed at the skinny tee — even Scoopy!”

http://simonsays.com/subs/excerpt.cfm?isbn=0689853572&areaid=183

Ah, yes, the scene where all the kids and Scoopy laugh
at the Christmas tee… the memories it brings back!
(Don’t worry; this is just a website error. It’s not
in the book.)

Maybe they were thinking of Scoopy-Doo…

……………………………………………………

PREORDER YOUR VALENTINE NOW

Last newsletter, I wrote that the DVD of BE MY VALENTINE,
CHARLIE BROWN was not yet available for preorder. Within
hours after my writing that, it was made available for
preorder, making me look like a durned fool.

So yes, you can now preorder that DVD, which includes the
additional animated specials YOU’RE IN LOVE, CHARLIE BROWN
and IT’S YOUR FIRST KISS, CHARLIE BROWN here:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?B0000714CP

Order now, and the disk will ship when it’s released in
early January.

……………………………………………………

REVIEW: SNOOPY’S GUIDE TO THE WRITING LIFE

This new book leads off with two introductions about
how Peanuts creator Charles Schulz felt about literature
and how he felt inferior to “real” writers. However,
the heart of the book is not about Schulz, it’s about
Snoopy. This hardcover with 188 horizontal black and white
pages mixes reprints of Peanuts strips with short essays
by dozens of famous authors responding to individual
strips, giving Snoopy lessons on how to work around common
writing problems.

This book is intended as a gift for writers, and it makes
a reasonable one. It is a book that is nice to put on
the coffee table, reading a few strips or an essay
or two as the mood grabs you. It really isn’t well suited
to being read cover to cover; after a while, many of the
writing strips seem redundant when read in quick repetition.
The writing advice is never too deep, but generally what
readers need is straightforward advice. Most essayists
focus on their own specialty, such as David Michaelis
(currently working on a major Schulz biography)
discussing the attitude you must have to write biographies.
However, the quality of the advice varies greatly, with
some writers giving nothing more than vague charges to keep
things interesting while others deal in far more concrete
advice. As with any artistic advice, don’t just swallow
everything you are told; weigh each piece of advice
against your own emotional reaction to it.

The book is designed, but unlike some books the design
features don’t interfere with reading the strips,
which is good news all around. They did make the odd
decision of pulling quotes from each short essay and
inserting them as highlights, as you will often see
in magazines. However, the “highlight” versions are
in text not much larger than the normal version, so
the whole effect of grabbing your attention for an
interesting excerpt is lost.

So if you’re particularly fond of Snoopy as writer, or
if you have writers on your gift list, then this book
is worth grabbing. With about 180 strips at a cover
price of just under $20 (although you can order it
at a substantial discount at the link below!) it’s not a
bargain for those who just want a bunch of strips — better
to pick up Peanuts Treasury or Peanuts: The Art Of Charles
M. Schulz if that is what you seek.

Order this book at: http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?1582971943

……………………………………………………

HOW BIG IS YOUR BOOK?

One of the things that keeps collecting books interesting,
lively, frustrating, or confusing, depending on one’s
view, is the variations that take what some might consider
to be the same books and makes them different books. On
my Peanuts book collectors guide, I’ve tried to cover
when there are very different books with the same title,
or substantial variation in contents (when there’s an
abridged version of a book available, for instance.)

However, I am not (yet) tracking all of the variations
that occur on a book as it’s reprinted over the years. Some
are pretty minor, such as changes in price or cover design.
Others are more significant, particularly to someone who
is trying to collect a set of something and may end up with
books that don’t look like much of a set.

As an example of the latter, I present the following
picture, taken of three copies of the same book
(Charlie Brown’s All-Stars) from the same publisher
(World).

http://AAUGH.com/archive/size.jpg

And if you think the indica is going to help you keep
things straight, think again. Both of the smaller
versions of this book are listed as “First Edition”
on the copyright page, even though they are clearly
different editions. I *think* the center version
actually came first, as the smaller version’s copyright
page includes the info that it is “A Read Aloud And
Easy Reading Program Selection”, a claim that did not
surface on the mid-sized version.

The largest version of this 1966 book was printed in
1972, part of a set of oversized versions apparently
sold in supermarkets.

(If you don’t have this book, let me point out that the
character at the far left of the cover image is 5, a
character whose name was a brief novelty in the strip
but who seemed to show up as a background character
for almost two decades!)

I am hoping to eventually list all editions and variations
on the list. At the moment, I’m finally starting to work
up a grid that will make it clearer which animated specials
are adapted in each line of animation-based books. Life
is hectic, however, so no promises that this will be
available soon.

……………………………………………………

Well, that’s all the news for now. As always, there is
the scent of more news coming ’round the corner, so
I have my ear to the ground, my shoulder to the wheel,
my nose to the grindstone, and boy do I have trouble
getting to sleep in that position!

A big thanks to those of you who have been recommending
this newsletter to your friends. Another big thanks
to those who go to http://AAUGH.com and click through
on a book even when you’re going to order some non-Peanuts
item from Amazon; the extra money helps me keep the site
around.

As always, please send your questions, comments, suggestions,
complaints, and e-mail address changes to nat@AAUGH.com

–Nat

proprietor

AAUGH.com

IN THIS ISSUE

* PEANUTS DVDS A-COMIN’!

* PEANUTS VALENTINE COVER UNCOVERED

* ACTION FIGURES (IF YOU CONSIDER HOLDING A BLANKET “ACTION”)

* PREORDERABLE BOARD BOOKS

* MORE SNOOPY FEATURES

* BOOK REVIEW: A CB THANKSGIVING

PEANUTS DVDS A-COMIN’!

Peanuts video expert Scott McGuire has spread the word that
January will bring us the next Peanuts DVD, this one with
three specials on it rather than the usual two. You’ll
get “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown” (the 1975 special, not
to be confused with the more recent “A Charlie Brown
Valentine”), “You’re In Love, Charlie Brown”, and “It’s Your
First Kiss, Charlie Brown”. Then in March comes another
DVD, this one featuring “It’s The Easter Beagle, Charlie
Brown”. These aren’t available for preorder yet. I’ll let
you know when they can be gotten.

If you’re a Peanuts animation fan, you owe it to yourself
to check out Scott’s website at:

http://web.mit.edu/smcguire/www/peanuts-animation.html

……………………………………………………..

PEANUTS VALENTINE COVER UNCOVERED

I’ve got a picture of the cover to the upcoming book
A PEANUTS VALENTINE which you can view at:

http://AAUGH.com/upcoming.htm

This is the collection of romance-themed Peanuts strips
which is due out in January, but you can preorder it
now from the page linked to above.

……………………………………………………..

ACTION FIGURES (IF YOU CONSIDER HOLDING A BLANKET “ACTION”)

I’m finally able to include some of the new Peanuts
action figures in the AAUGH.com shop. These are a good
looking set of action figures, although I hear tell
that getting them to stand correctly away on a flat
surface (instead of on the dioramas they come with)
is sometimes a little tricky. At this point, the
three sets you can order here are all part of the
Great Pumpkin set, so the kids come with their
Halloween costumes and related items:

* SET A (Charlie Brown, Sally, and Lucy):

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?B000067NSX

* SET B (Linus, Snoopy, Schroeder):

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?B000067NSW

* SNOOPY DOGHOUSE PLAYSET:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?B000067R0L

Take a look! (I try to keep my Peanuts collecting
mania controllable by just focusing on the books,
but I admit that my palms itch whenever I see one
of these sets.)

……………………………………………………..

PREORDERABLE BOARD BOOKS

I’ve managed to find out more about SNOOPY’S FEELINGS and
WOODSTOCK IN ACTION, the two upcoming board books meant
for your 1-4 year old. These are cut-shape board books rather
than square, and each will have the characters face on
the front in 3-D in soft vinyl.

They won’t be out until the spring, but if you want to
order them know to make sure that you don’t forget, do so!

SNOOPY’S FEELINGS:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689856628

WOODSTOCK IN ACTION:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689856636

……………………………………………………..

MORE SNOOPY FEATURES

For those of you who collected the SNOOPY STARS series of
British books and had trouble finding the last one (and
those last few Stars are hard to find in the UK and nigh
impossible in the US), good news: The SNOOPY FEATURES
series which reprints these books is finally reprinting
the final book in the series, along with three other
books. This new set of four will ship in February, but
you can preorder now. The links I’m providing go to
Amazon.co.uk, so be prepared for the shipping cost
(although you might as well order the whole bunch at
once, since shipping additional books costs much less
than shipping the first).

* SNOOPY FEATURES AS THE WINTER WONDER DOG

Presumably reprints Snoopy Stars as The Terror of the Ice (#3)

http://AAUGH.com/uk/to.htm?1841611638

* SNOOPY FEATURES AS MASTER OF DISGUISE (#11)

Reprints Snoopy Stars as The Great Pretender

http://AAUGH.com/uk/to.htm?1841611611

* SNOOPY FEATURES AS THE TENNIS ACE

Reprints Snoopy Stars in The Mixed Doubles (#17)

http://AAUGH.com/uk/to.htm?184161162X

* SNOOPY FEATURES AS THE GREAT ENTERTAINER

Reprints Snoopy Stars as The Entertainer (#21)

http://AAUGH.com/uk/to.htm?1841611603

Now here’s something that may give us “collect ‘em all!”
types a pause: Ravette is reprinting these books 4
at a time. However, there were 21 books in the original
series. Assuming I’m right about …Winter Wonder Dog
being …Terror of the Ice, this latest batch will
leave unreprinted numbers 9 (Snoopy Stars as The Branch
Manager), 14 (…in The Pursuit of Pleasure), 15 (…as
The Weatherman), 18 (…in Brotherly Love), and 20 (…as
The Holidaymaker). Will they reprint all five? Or will
they just do another batch of four, and leave one
painfully unreprinted? Let us see what the future brings!

……………………………………………………..

BOOK REVIEW: A CB THANKSGIVING

The new book adaptation of A CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING
is out. Like ther other books in this series, it takes
visual humor and tries to describe them in prose,
always a dicey proposition. (Presumably, they do this
because reading prose is deemed “educational” while
following a story from pictures isn’t. So perhaps it
serves the child, but it doesn’t serve the story.)

And yet, the story survives, to some degree. The artistic
adaptation on this one is by Tom Brannon, who is also
handling the above-mentioned board books. The images
are clear nd communicative but generally bland and stiff.

If you want this, you can get it at:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689850271

But the real way to get this story is in its original
form, as an animated cartoon.

DVD: http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?B00004W5UL

VHS: http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?6304209282

……………………………………………………..

Well, that’s all the news for now. Nothing particularly
fascinating has been added to the AAUGH.com reference
library in the past couple weeks; I’ve been too busy
writing my next book and reviewing the new TV season (which
you can see at http://AAUGH.com/tv/ ) to do much book
hunting.

In case anyone’s curious: my asking if any of you had
YOU’RE IN SCHOOL NOW, CHARLIE BROWN received only one
“yes” response out of the hundreds of Peanuts book fans
who get this newsletter. I think we can count that one
as “rare”.

Please send any comments, suggestions, criticisms, witticisms,
or wrinkled up old $50 bills to nat@aaugh.com

–Nat

proprietor

http://AAUGH.com