The return of Baby Snoopy?

I’ve spoken here before about “ghost books”, titles that were once entered into some publisher’s or distributor’s list but never really existed, never really will exist, but due to various computer processes keep getting relisted as coming some time in the future. What we have today is a listing for a book which has strong signs of being a ghost book, but which has never popped up on my radar before.

Baby Snoopy, the infantilized version of comicdom’s favorite beagle, had his fans and his detractors, but they started phasing him out of the licensing a fair while back. I think you can still find some decorations for nurseries bearing his image, but the last new books featuring him were published about 7 years ago, when Little Simon stopped publishing new Peanuts books.

But now I’m finding listings for Snoopy’s New Home, a Baby Snoopy book published by Little Simon. The UK Amazon site says that it’s coming out next June. The US site? They say it’s coming out in August, 2030! I guess that eighteen years from now, we’ll know the truth. I think I’ll keep this one off of the list of upcoming Peanuts books, just to be safe.

(Hey, you know what they’ll call Baby Snoopy eighteen years in the future? Adult Snoopy!)

Upcoming releases
Destined to blow up

Puffer Jacket Snoopy is a thing… enough of a thing that I’ll be discussing an item that only barely qualifies for this blog (it comes with a book… a tiny book of stickers.) Amazon is now listing for October release a Desktop Inflatable Puffer Jacket Snoopy. It’s one of the …

Upcoming releases
The Return of What’s Necessary

Coming in April is a reissue of Only What’s Necessary, Chip Kidd’s second book on the art of Peanuts, reissued for the 75th anniversary of the strip. (My review of the original 2015 edition is here.) For those keeping track, this is the third cover for this book. Here are the …

Upcoming releases
Covers to coming things

It’s that time when all the computer systems update and suddenly we’re seeing covers t0o some of the books that are rolling down the road toward us. The big one in this batch is probably Snoopy: The Story of My Life, which is the Cartoon Art Museum’s Andrew Farago ghosting …