IN THIS ISSUE:
* MUSEUM CATALOG OUT
* NEW ANIMATED SPECIALS ON THE WAY
* IT’S BABY SNOOPY, BABY!
* PEANUTS WILL POP UP
* SCHULZ: GREAT CARTOONIST, LOUSY BOOK
* FURTHER CONVERSATIONS
MUSEUM CATALOG OUT
The catalog of the Schulz Museum’s three exhibits of tribute
strips is finally available. TRIBUTE TO SPARKY is a spiral-bound
hardcover, 164 pages of material. Alas, the review copy that
is supposed to be winging its way to me has yet to arrive, so
I can’t give you the full rundown. If you want to see a picture
of the book, however, you can take a look here:
http://www.schulzmuseum.org/store/store.html
and if you want to buy a copy… well, no, you still can’t buy
it through AAUGH.com, but you don’t have to schlep out to
Santa Rosa to buy it, either. Call (707) 579-4452 during museum
hours (remember, they’re west coast and closed Tuesdays) and ask
for the museum store. When you get them, tell them AAUGH.com
sent you! (They won’t know what that means, of course, but I
like confusing folks.)
When I get my review copy, there’ll be a review.
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NEW ANIMATED SPECIALS ON THE WAY
Word is now out that there are actually TWO new animated Peanuts
specials coming this year. In addition to the previously-discussed
LUCY MUST BE TRADED, CHARLIE BROWN (a baseball-themed show), we
can now expect I WANT A DOG FOR CHRISTMAS, CHARLIE BROWN. It seems
clear from the title that this will be a Rerun show, even the first
time it airs! (Laugh now. That’s the joke.)
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IT’S BABY SNOOPY, BABY!
I’ve gotten some more info on some of the upcoming kids books.
SLEEPY TIME (featuring Baby Snoopy) and HELLO WORLD (featuring
Woodstock) are shaped cloth books, good for kids as young as
6 months. PUPPY DAYS stars Baby Snoopy and the rest of the Daisy
Hill pups, and is part of the Ready-To-Read line of books that
Little Simon has been releasing. However, this is a Pre-Level 1 book,
as opposed to the rest of the Peanuts books in the line which
are all Level 2. This means that it’s aimed at the youngest
possible readers.
For a full schedule of upcoming Peanuts books, head to:
http://AAUGH.com/upcoming.htm
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PEANUTS WILL POP UP
Coming in Spring of 2004 is PEANUTS: A POP-UP CELEBRATION, an
18 page long pop-up book with pop-ups and interactive pages
based on some of the essential Peanuts scenes (Snoopy on his
doghouse, the football kick, etc.) This will be available in a
$19.95 standard edition and a $150 limited edition. Paige
Braddock is adapting the art.
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SCHULZ: GREAT CARTOONIST, LOUSY BOOK
After years of looking, I have finally landed myself a copy of
CHARLES SCHULZ: GREAT CARTOONIST, part of the Reaching Your Goal
series of biographies for kids. While we’ve seen a number of
such biographies aimed at school libraries come out over the
past few years, this predates them all, having been published
by Rourke Enterprises in 1989.
It’s a short book, a little over 1000 words on 24 pages. It’s
not the most interesting writing for kids (and certainly not
for adults), but at least author Marilyn Mascola’s words are
more accurate than some of the other such books that have come
out. Oh, it’s not true that Schulz was living at 1 Snoopy Place
at the time (that is the office address), and it’s not true
that United Features decided to put the strip in 8 papers
(rather that’s how many papers chose to run the strip), but
these statements are merely condesations of the truth.
It’s the pictures that make this book particularly bad. Instead
of relying on photographs as most such books do, every page of
the book has a full-color illustration by Luciano Lazzarino,
whose drawings I find to be poorly proportioned and unappealing.
He was also likely working with limited reference material. His
likenesses of Schulz are poor. And in terms of facts one might
derive from the images: no, Schulz did not have Charlie Brown’s
zig-zag pattern on every shirt and vest he ever wore. No, Li’l
Folks was not a strip of three horizontal panels. No, the
Reuben Award isn’t a plaque. No, the New York Times does not
and never has carried the strip (that paper doesn’t have a
comics section). No, in 1950 there was not a building taller
than the Empire State Building a mere block away from it. And
so on…
(I just realized that there’s an interior shot of an upper
floor office in a New York skyscraper with a wall of
windows and a door on that same wall… perhaps such doors
were handy for failed stock brokers during the crash of
1929, but in general having a door on the outside wall
of an upper level of a skyscraper is a Bad Idea.)
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FURTHER CONVERSATIONS
If you read the book CHARLES M. SCHULZ: CONVERSATIONS, collecting
a number of interviews with Schulz from across his career,
then you might want to know that the same publisher is
launching similar volumes with other cartoonists.
CARL BARKS: CONVERSATIONS:
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1578065011 in paperback
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1578065003 in hardcover
(That’s the inventor of Scrooge McDuck!)
MILTON CANIFF: CONVERSATIONS:
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1578064384 in paperback
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1578064376 in hardcover
(the man behind Steve Canyon and Terry And The Pirates)
And, of course, if you want CHARLES M. SCHULZ: CONVERSATIONS,
you can still get it:
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1578063051 in paperback
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1578063043 in hardcover
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Another newsletter is over, and I shall do my little song and
dance… more news when there’s more news, send me your
comments, complaints, questions, changed email addresses, and
peanut butter cups. Don’t take any wooden pickels, and I’ll
see you next time.
–Nat
proprietor
http://AAUGH.com
