the library is back and growing
- By : Nat
- Category : Classic finds, Reviews
The AAUGH.com Reference Library has now been unpacked after our recent move. Well, mostly. There’s still a box or two that I have to locate – most frustratingly, this includes the box that has all of our various book adaptations of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
But meanwhile, the Library continues to gather more books. I just received a copy of Snoopy’s First Code Book. This is part of an educational set that was published in 1971. I already have the central book, Snoopy’s Secret Code Book, and the teacher’s guidebook for Snoopy’s Yellow Code Book, but I consider this new one a find. It is, after all, a student workbook, but it’s pristine, without any scribbling from a student in it.
Also added in is The Wonderful World of Peanuts Musicals, a collector’s guide/price guide to music boxes and musical display items. It’s full color, heavily illustrated guide. The paper is slick, but it’s not exactly a slick production in terms of layout or, occasionally, proofreading. It’s not a vital book unless the musical items are your thing, but with hundreds of pictures, it’s got some nice stuff to look at. I snagged this one earlier this week when I stopped by Snoopy’s Gallery & Gift Shop in Santa Rosa, where it was marked down to $20 (cover price, $26.95)…. and it looks like the same deal is available from them online, that’d be a good place to get it.

The strangest book added to the library lately is an Italian book, entitled simple Peanuts: Charlie Brown. It’s part of a 1993 set called Stranilibri – literally, strange books. This cardboard book folds open to reveal a booklet on one side that includes a quiz and rules to a game, and the other side folds open to reveal puzzle pieces that you have to detach to play. Since you also have to know Italian to learn the rules, I think I’ll forego destroying the book. This is just one of a series of such books, each with a different character: Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and so on.
But not everything that gets added to the library is a book. I just picked up off of eBay a small set of “It’s Only A Game” cartoons clipped from Sunday papers in 1957 and 1958… but in with it, I got some Peanuts Sundays, mostly clipped from papers in 1953 and 1954. They are gloriously large, looking much bigger and bolder than Sunday strips are run today. Some of them are the two-tier versions, but some are three tiers… and the 1954 ones are the storyline in which Lucy enters a golf tournament, which means, yup, it’s the storyline with lots of visible adults (if mostly visible below the neck.) And as good as it is to have all the reprints, all the Complete Peanuts with complete and utterly readable strips in them, it’s nice to have some strips in the full glory of the way they were meant to be seen.