another Hallmark edition

I was reminded today that I’ve not really kept an eye on my local Hallmark store, because I discovered another Hallmark edition of a Peanuts book, one that likely came out a few years back. It’s Peanuts Guide to Life. In addition to having Hallmark markings, their edition differs from the standard U.S. edition in that it doesn’t have a dust jacket, but printed boards with raised lettering for the logo. The details of the Peanuts characters are in black, as opposed to just being raised highlights on solid-white figures. The standard edition was printed in the U.S., while the Hallmark edition took advantage of cheaper printing in China. The price on both is the same: $12.95.

As long as I’m posting, let me point out to the Harry Potterheads among us that the new from-the-Potter-Universe book The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be released on December 4th, and can now be ordered in two editions: the $12.99 hardcover (42% off brings it to $7.59) and a special fancy-dancy Amazon-exclusive ornate-and-boxed collector’s edition for a round $100. All net proceeds from the sale will be donated to The Children’s Voice campaign. And if you don’t cheap out with the free shipping, they’ll actually deliver the book to you on the same day it hits stores.

Classic finds
Charles M. Schulz: Pinko scum?

As with most of my history finds, I found the column when I was looking for something else, something only related because they both had the term “comic strip.” But there it was… George Boardman, PhD, was telling the world that there was a problem with socialist propaganda on America’s …

New releases
Peanuts Storybook Treasury

The Peanuts Storybook Treasury slams 18 of the Simon Spotlight storybooks from 2015 through 2021 into a single hardcover volume. In order to get them all into 304 pages, it cheats just a little bit, skipping over the covers and individual copyright pages, and occasionally combining what had been two …

Classic finds
A set completed and a mystery solved

Twenty years ago when I first published a collection of It’s Only a Game by Charles Schulz and Jim Sasseville, I proudly announced that it was the first reprint collection of the strip ever! But then I saw at auction a little pamphlet that looked like this: and I later found …