This newsletter is being sent to you because someone (presumably yourself) submitted your email address for a subscription. If this is arriving in error, just respond to this email with a short message letting us know to take you off. (Under normal conditions, this newsletter will arrive about once a month. During the current flurry of interest in Peanuts and the book shortages it has caused, we are sending out about a newsletter per week.)
In this issue:
*SNOOPY TOYS!
*PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION BACK IN STOCK
*OTHER BOOKS BACK IN STOCK
*WHAT ARE PEANUTS GANG BOOKS, ANYWAY?
*PEANUTS QUILT TRIBUTE
*"BIG STUFFED DOG" ON VIDEO
*STRANGE PEANUTS BOOKS: LUCY RULES OK?
*AAUGH.com IS GOOD FOR GIFTS
SNOOPY TOYS! For the first time, AAUGH.com is carrying Peanuts toys. We’ve got a new batch of 6" Snoopy figures, with him dressed in outfits from around the world. I’ve already gotten people raving about how CUTE these are. You’ve got to check out Alaskan Snoopy, Texan Snoopy, African Snoopy, and more! Head over to http://AAUGH.com and click on the TOYS link!
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PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION BACK IN STOCK
The most popular book at AAUGH.com is finally back in stock. As I type this, its available for shipping within 24 hours. For those of you who have been avoiding ordering it because of the wait involved, now is the time to order. I cannot promise how long this situation will last (although I expect that supply has now stablized). As I type this, it’s available for 30% off the cover price, which is a substantial savings. This is a hardcover volume released to celebrate the strip’s 50th year, with strips from all eras and commentary by Schulz (although the commentary is a reprint of the commentary from Peanuts Jubilee, the 25th anniversary book.)
Head on over to http://AAUGH.com and click on the picture of the book to order it!
If you have already ordered this book and not yet received it, it should be shipping soon *unless* you ordered other books at the same time and asked that all books be held until the order was complete.
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OTHER BOOKS BACK IN STOCK
At this moment, What Makes You Think Your Happy is back in stock. This is a reprint of a book that was originally called Snoopy, and it’s made entirely of Snoopy strips from the 1950s. This is also available to order from the front page of http://AAUGH.com
See You Later, Litegator, a hardcover gift book of lawyer-themed strips, has also resurfaced. Visit the site and click on Themed Strip Reprints to find this one.
And the shortage of Peanuts Gang books is over. The publisher has gotten the most recent titles back into print. Because the crisis in these is over, I’m no longer listing the in-stock ones on the first page of http://AAUGH.com — head over to the Kids Books page to find them.
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WHAT ARE PEANUTS GANG BOOKS, ANYWAY?
I’m glad you asked. A lot of Peanuts fans have not seen these, because they aren’t found on the humor rack at most book stores. Instead, they’re in among the cheap kids books. Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to publish kids storybooks about Peanuts. In most cases (except for the books which just adapted Peanuts TV cartoons), they involved having kid storybook writers make up tales about the Peanuts characters, and often they didn’t do a very good job of capturing the feel of Peanuts. The are would be either a recycling of Schulz’s characters with new backgrounds, or completely new art by someone else. The quality of these is variable.
Peanuts Gang takes a whole other approach to the problem. They take actual storylines from the comic strip, and reproduce actual Schulz art with actual Schulz dialog. You can’t get more Peanuts-y than that.
These color paperbacks are cheap (the cover price is $3.50, and we generally have a nice discount off of even that). My favorite of the currently available ones is Beware Of The Snoring Ghost, in which Peppermint Patty gets left behind at school, but her snore still haunts her old desk. World War I Flying Ace fans should grab a copy of A Flying Ace Needs A Lot Of Root Beer. Surf on over to http://AAUGH.com and click on the Kids Books links to see what else is available.
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PEANUTS QUILT TRIBUTE
A move is underway for Peanuts fans to make a big quilt in tribute to Schulz. If you’d like to add your own square to this quilt, you can get more information at http://www.thesnoopyroom.net/happiness_quilt/quilt.html
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"BIG STUFFED DOG" ON VIDEO
I’ve just added The Big Stuffed Dog to our video offerings. This isn’t about the Peanuts characters. Instead, it’s a live-action TV special about the big stuffed Snoopy doll that a little boy loses, and the adventures it has once its out of his hands.
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STRANGE PEANUTS BOOKS: LUCY RULES OK?
In my latest foray into the stranger books in my personal Peanuts collection, we find Lucy Rules OK?, a British strip reprint book from the 1970s. This collects various Sunday strips featuring Lucy (and a couple without her) in a large format. What makes this book strange? When you first flip through the book, something doesn’t look quite right. At first you assume it’s just the coloring, which is not the original coloring and is in fact quite poorly done. But even looking past that, something looks wrong. Then it hits you: it’s the lettering! It’s not Schulz’s lettering! It’s a clumsier hand trying to imitate Schulz (and let’s remember that Sparky was an expert letterer, and worked as a comics letterer even before he was working professionally as a cartoonist.) Comparing the strips reprinted here to more reliable sources, you find that all the dialogue has been relettered and many of the balloons have been redrawn. Why? Well, my best guess is that this is an English edition of a previously-existing foreign language Peanuts books. Instead of returning to the original source (which would’ve required laying out and recoloring work), they relettered the foreign edition back into English. This would also explain the weird title, which sounds like a clumsy translation.
If you’re a Peanuts book geek like I am, make sure you check out the Peanuts book collector’s guide on our site. Head over to http://AAUGH.com and click on Collector’s Guide in the left-hand margin.
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AAUGH.com IS GOOD FOR GIFTS
If you’re looking for a gift for a friend, ordering through AAUGH.com makes a lot of sense. You can have any order shipped to any address. If you’re ordering through our main store, you can even have your item gift-wrapped before shipping, and include a note to the recipient (gift-wrapping and note are not available on orders through the Ultra-Discount shop, sorry). This can save you a lot of effort in getting a gift out to a friend on the other side of the country. Various shipping options are available to help assure that your friend gets their gift in a timely fashion. So just order your books in the normal fashion; when you check out, you will be allowed the option to send your order as gifts.
(Speaking of gifts: if anyone has given you an Amazon.com gift certificate, you can indeed use those on orders through the main store!)
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So what do you think? I’m always looking for feedback on the newsletter, or to hear what people’s favorite Peanuts books are, or for any comments about AAUGH.com. Drop me a line by responding to this message!
–Nat Gertler proprietor http://AAUGH.com
