* REPORT ON THE SCHULZ MUSEUM
* MUSEUM BOOKS
* FREE SHIPPING IS NOW CHEAPER!
* THE WRITING LIFE
* BOOKS NOW SHIPPING
* ODD PEANUTS BOOK: JAPANESE CATALOG
REPORT ON THE SCHULZ MUSEUM
I had a great time at the Schulz Museum. If any of you
are going to be in the San Francisco Bay area, it’s
certainly worth the hour drive north to Santa Rosa.
Admission is $8, with discounts for seniors and
students. Downstairs in this sharp new building they
have about 80 original strips on display, plus a
space for their current exhibition (at the moment, it’s
some of the Schulz tribute strips, plus a room showing
Peanuts videos. (There’s also an about-the-museum video
which is showing in the auditorium basically any time
that there isn’t anything else going on.)
Upstairs is a timeline of Schulz’s life, with a variety
of interesting mementos, including the famous
Schulz-decorated wall taken from his early-1950’s house.
On the other side of that wall you will find reproductions
of covers from Peanuts books in various languages around
the world.
If you go, be sure to sit in the sofas in the original
art room and check out the three scrapbooks there. They
have copies of correspondence to Sparky and Jeannie
during the days from Sparky’s retirement on through the
memorial service, with notes from everyone from young
fans to Donna “The Little Red-Haired Girl” Wold to
Bill Clinton. Some keen stuff.
My presentation there covered the history of Peanuts
books. Basically, I did a rundown on the history of
the primary reprint books, and followed it up with
some of the odder books that have come out over the
years. I talked to hundreds of people, did 9 shows,
and had time for plenty of questions and even a few
answers. It was fun! (And a “hi” to all the new
newsletter subscribers who saw me at the talks.)
So stop on by the museum, and the ice rink with its
Warm Puppy snack bar, and the Snoopy gift shop one
more building down. Tell them AAUGH.com sent you,
and you’ll get a free look of confusion!
For more info, go to: http://www.SchulzMuseum.org
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MUSEUM BOOKS
The Museum has its own little gift shop, with museum
t-shirts, stuffed Snoopy dolls with museum tags, and
some books. Most importantly for the Peanuts book
collector, they’re selling copies of the handy Peanuts
reference book 50 YEARS OF HAPPINESS. This book was
originally made available through the Peanuts Collector
Club, and this new printing was done specially for the
museum.
The museum is planning more books for the future. They
aren’t ready to publicly announce their exciting plans,
but there will be good stuff to come. (But to head off
the inevitable emails: no, they are not planning a
Complete Peanuts at this point.)
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FREE SHIPPING IS NOW CHEAPER!
Some of you AAUGH.com shoppers have been taking advantage
of Amazon’s free US shipping on orders over $49. Now
that deal is even easier to take advantage of, because
they have lowered the threshold to $25! So head over to
http://AAUGH.com, order a few Peanuts books at discount
prices, and luxuriate in the free shipping!
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THE WRITING LIFE
One of the AAUGH.com elves snuck me a peak at a copy of
the upcoming book, SNOOPY’S GUIDE TO THE WRITING LIFE.
As suspected, this book is basically a bunch of strips
featuring Snoopy as the World’s Greatest Author,
interspersed with short text pieces by thirty big name
authors about writing and being a writer. This book will
be out next month. Order now at:
http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?1582971943
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BOOKS NOW SHIPPING
If you’ve ordered a copy of WHY, CHARLIE BROWN, WHY?,
then it should be winging its way to you at this very
moment. And if you haven’t ordered a copy, why not?
This reprint of the book adaptation of the touching
animated special about a girl with leukemia contains
original Schulz drawings which make it the best of the
animated adaptations:
http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0345455312
The storybook SNOOOPY: FLYING ACE TO THE RESCUE, part
of the Ready-To-Read line for kids, is also now
shipping.
http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689851480
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ODD PEANUTS BOOK: JAPANESE CATALOG
The Japanese are wild for licensed character products,
and Snoopy is one of their most popular characters.
(Interestingly, he’s more popular with men than with
women — he’s the third most popular character with
men, and the seventh with women, with only Winnie The
Pooh beating him out in both sexes.) My one big
Peanuts book find of the museum trip was a 1993 catalog
of Japanese Peanuts products, which was for sale not
at the museum but at the gift shop by the skating rink.
The catalog is a class act. It comes in a slipcover
box with a separate Index (it appears to be a listing
of the manufacturers with contact information.) Both
the 172-page book and the 48-page index are in full color,
with plenty of photos. Most of the products are
ones that were not released in the U.S., including such
things as Snoopy bowling balls, Peanuts breakfast
cereals, and Snoopy And His Friends chopsticks. The book
also has a guide to the relationships between the Peanuts
characters, pages introducing various characters, and
what appears to be a bio of Schulz.
If you like books of Peanuts collectibles and don’t need
to have a price guide as part of it, you’ll want this
book. Alas, the gift shop does not appear to offer it
through their website, but if you stop by the shop and
pick one up, it’ll run you a mere 5 bucks.
(The pictured item I most want? A diorama of the Peanuts
characters in traditional Japanese ceremonial dress.)
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Well, summer is winding down, and so is this issue of
the newsletter. Keep those questions, suggestions,
comments, and e-mail updates coming — address them to
nat@AAUGH.com
–Nat
proprietor
http://AAUGH.com
