The new hardcover from UK Peanuts publisher Ravette, Celebrating Peanuts, is not, as I guessed earlier, a reprint of Peanuts Guide to Life. Nor is it a reprint or abridgement of Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years. Instead, it’s an original strip collection, covering the entire run of the strip (well, it has the first strip and the last strip). The distribution of strips is uneven, both in dates (there’s only a couple strips from the first couple years) and in theme. The book is section thematically, with untitled sections on the Charlie Brown & Snoopy relationship, on the World War I Flying Ace, on Joe Cool, on Snoopy’s romances, on Snoopy the author, Snoopy the lawyer, the Beagle Scouts, and sports.

Notice a bit of a trend there? Yup. A grand total of 10 strips do not have Snoopy – one in the introduction (the first Peanuts strip), and 9 in the sports section. Ten, out of 352 total strips reprinted. Now, I’m not trying to suggest that Snoopy appearances are uncommon in the strip, but he didn’t have an appearance rate of more than 97%.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise to those who have followed the books that Ravette published. After all, this is a publisher that published a 21-volume themed series specifically called Snoopy Stars… which they then reprinted as the Snoopy Features series…. and those they  gathered two volumes at a time to reprint in the Snoopy 2-in-1 series. But even those books sometimes had a higher rate of non-Snoopy strips than this general collection.

But this more expounding on a curiosity than a complaint; there ain’t nothing wrong with a book full of Snoopy strips. This isn’t an ungainly big volume, it’s a conveniently-sized 128 page hardcover, priced at 9.99 pounds. Strips are run mostly 4 dailies or two dailies and a Sunday on a page, all in black and white (except for the final strip) with color page backgrounds. It’s a gift book… and it lets you know that on page six (which is somewhat odd; one expects to find text like “this gift book is a must-have collection for every Peanuts fanatic” on the back cover, not on the fourth page of the introduction.) And it should serve that purpose just fine… frankly, it’s a much better thing than what I predicted and feared it was.

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