Regnery Publishing has announced that they will be coming out with a series of a dozen Peanuts books aimed at the 4-8 year old set, intended to teach American history and “what makes America strong”. The first three books are slated for next fall, coming out under their Little Patriot Press imprint… an imprint that, until now, has specialized in books narrated by mice. (I’m not kidding.)

One thing that makes this interesting is that Regnery is a politically conservative line – that’s not my take on it, that’s how they promote themselves. Now, Peanuts has certainly been used in ways that could be perceived as leaning politically one way or the other before, but this would seem the most straightforward of them.

It will be interesting to see what is done with this, and how political (and how obvious about it) they choose to get. Schulz himself tended to avoid loud politics in the strip – he wasn’t exactly producing Doonesbury – but he certainly had views that came into play. Folks have tried to pigeonhole his beliefs, which is problematic, not only because you are dealing with someone who was producing his main work for half a century ( he was a person subject to the normal changes and evolutions in viewpoint.) but because there are easy missteps to make in trying to place him on some political chart. For at least most of his life, he can be accurately described as Christian and as conservative, but as best as I can tell he was never a “conservative Christian” (dedicated to some core form of Christianity and not open to variance from or reconsiderations within that) nor a “Christian conservative” (one whose political beliefs are directed by a core set of religious beliefs, generally seeking strong influence of those beliefs over government.) When you’re delving into US history, you are dealing with matters that are still subject to very differing interpretations. I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s handled.

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