For a while I’ve been keeping an eye on an upcoming book from Ravette Publishing in the UK. Ravette, who have been publishing Peanuts books for a long time, are a bit tough to track – they don’t even have a website that I can find. But the UK branch of Amazon had been listing their book Celebrating Peanuts as coming up for a while, and it’s due sometime this month. But the details listed had left me a little uncertain of what the book was. It was being pushed as a 60th anniversary book, and yes, in the US there is Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years, but the fact that the UK book was actually that seemed unlikely, given not only its 128 page count but also its 10 pound price; that’s both less than a quarter the length and less than a quarter the price of the US book. An abridged edition perhaps? Maybe, but the description of the book as “containing a selection of some of the best illustrations, captions and strips from the last 60 years” made it sound unlikely – the other book was a selection of strips, and commentary. But today I saw the cover, and finally it all made sense:

First off, it’s square. Secondly – see that set of silhouettes at the bottom. That’s quite familiar. In fact, it looks a lot like this:

Now, Ravette has already reprinted that 128 page book… except they broke it down several shorter books:

But Ravette has a history of reusing material, repackaging things under a different title. So I’d bet dollars to donuts (which, admittedly, these days is roughly an even-money bet) that Celebrating Peanuts is simply a reprint of Peanuts Guide to Life, under a single cover, possibly stripped of its Bill Cosby intro.

I’ll have to order one and find out for sure…

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