Not much news to be had, but I wanted to get a newsletter out while I could. I’m going on vacation for a couple of weeks…
and after that, things will be hectic, as AAUGH.com headquarters will be moving to more spacious digs. The site will always be online, of course, but there will be times when I won’t be available to quickly answer questions, or when the AAUGH.com reference library will be packed away.
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THERE’S NO TIME LEFT FOR GIFTS…
…at least, if you want them mailed to someone and to arrive by Christmas. If there’s someone you forgot, you can always order an Amazon.com gift certificate to be e-mailed to them. And if they’re Peanuts fans, you can let them know that the gift certificate can be spent at AAUGH.com.
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PEANUTS ILLUSTRATED SONGBOOK
A new songbook featuring 30 Vince Guaraldi tunes and Peanuts illustrations is now available. THE PEANUTS ILLUSTRATED SONGBOOK has an introduction by jazz journalist Hank Bordowitz, talking about Guaraldi’s work and how he became involved with Peanuts. http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0634030906
(There’s a small image of this book’s cover on the front page of http://AAUGH.com )
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ODD PEANUTS BOOK: CHRISTMAS STOCKING
My files are a mess. I can’t be sure whether or not I’ve covered this book in the newsletter before — if I have, don’t consider this a repeat but rather a return to a classic, much like the continued reairings of A Charlie Brown Christmas
CHARLIE BROWN’S CHRISTMAS STOCKING is an example of what I consider "lost" Peanuts work, featuring Schulz material that has not been easily available for decades and is not plentiful on the used book market. This is a special booklet created for Good Housekeeping magazine’s December 1963 issue, which means that it wasn’t rare at the time (the publication refers to this as their gift for "12 million women [and] your husbands and children") but most of those copies have long since hit the recycling station or the landfill.
This book, which was released after Happiness Is A Warm Puppy and Security Is A Thumb And A Blanket were already hits but years before A Charlie Brown Christmas hit TV, consists of 15 single images with dialog in text captions. Most of these pages work find as stand-alone gags, but read in sequence they build a story which focuses on the problems of hanging Christmas stockings in a modern house. "How can you hang a Christmas stocking on a thermostat?" The illustrations are clean, crisp genuine Schulz created just for this booklet. The cover has an odd image of Charlie Brown’s head sticking out of a Christmas stocking.
I do hope that a new home in print is found for pieces like this which have fallen through the cracks. With ever more of the newspaper strips being offered in books, it would be a shame for these quality pieces to remain lost to most fans.
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That’s all the news and views I have for youse. Do feel free to send my your questions and your comments, just be patient about waiting for responses. And do keep me up to date with your email address changes.
Joy and peace in 2002!
–Nat proprietor http://AAUGH.com
