A further look at The Peanuts Collection
- By : Nat
- Category : Upcoming releases
Ah, time to return to our flip-through of my upcoming book, The Peanuts Collection, which the publisher seems to think folks will want — it’s tied for 70th place in terms of print run for books announced for October release. (For those of you not in the book biz – 70th is quite high, there are thousands of books released each moth, and October is a month for big releases, in anticipation of holiday sales.)
We were about to turn to page 10, where we find a page just about Charlie Brown – the first of a series of character-focused pages scattered through the book. On this spread, there are plenty of images, with pictures of Charlie Brown through the years, of Schulz drawing the character, of the character in animated and doll form. And hey, there’s a 1956 letter from the famed Dr. Spock (no, not the Star Trek guy, he was Mr. Spock) to Mr. Schulz (addressed simply as that) about Charlie Brown. But the big thing on this spread is the latest removable reproduction – a Schulz sketch of Charlie Brown, reproduced down to the torn corners of the paper.
Flip the page, and we’re on to a spread about how Peanuts fill lives at playtime… with another removable reproduction, this an 8-page version of a Saalfield coloring book, one of those done using versions of the original strips, with the filled-in blacks hollowed out, as discussed here (although it’s not the same volume.)
As the AAUGH Blogger, I get a fair number of “how can I find such-and-such old Peanuts item?” questions. The one item that I get the most requests for is The Peanuts Book of Pumpkin Carols, a greeting card booklet issued by Hallmark, filled with Halloween parodies of Christmas songs. A reproduction of that is the take-out item on the next spread, which is about Peanuts and Halloween. And for those of you who know that Pumpkin Carols was released in a number of formats over the years, you shold be glad to know we picked a pumpkin-shaped format over one of the more mundane formats.
To wrap up this look, we get to the next character-oriented spread. In this case, Lucy and Linus have to share a spread, which you know isn’t making either of them happy. To me, the nice surprise image here is a letter to Schulz from Lucy. No, not that Lucy… it’s from that other famous Lucy, the I Love Lucy Lucy.
And then on the next page…. oh, wait, I said I’d stop there. But there is some cool stuff on the next page. I’ll get to that next time.
Those of you who want to buy this book from your local comic book store should let them know now. They can find the book in the current Previews catalog, page 344, item AUG10 1289. If you have a bookstore and want to preorder, the ISBN is 978-0316086103 (US edition), 978-1741730685 (Australian edition), or 978-1-84773-827-1 (UK edition.) For those who like to order from your favorite online sites, here are the links:
