Despite my broad interest in Peanuts books, I don’t generally pursue coloring books, but in my search for interesting Peanuts images, I couldn’t resist getting this coloring book… excuse me, a book of “pictures to colour”, it is British after all. Look at the rendering of color, the rosy cheeks. It’s legitimate to wonder how the Peanuts characters should look beyond the restrictions of the sort of coloring that was used on the comics page at the time this came out (and I can’t point to exactly when that was), but ultimately, I don’t think this was the right answer:

My favorite part of this picture? Charlie Brown’s socks.

He is a coordinated dresser, isn’t he?

The coloring book itself is nice, in that it reprints late-1950s strips – the black areas have been replaced with outlines, some background detail has been added, the word balloons and dialog have been redrawn, and in some cases a panel has been dropped and its text redistributed. It’s certainly not a strip reprint for the purist, but I like the fact that it’s using the coloring book format to bring actual Peanuts humor to the reader. There’s reasons to not do that as a straight strip reprint… you tend to get repetitive panels that are less interesting to the colorer.

I’m glad this one’s in the collection.

It’s the last full day to have free shipping get there by Christmas. Go shop!

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