First off, I hope that everyone had a happy and safe News Year’s Eve celebration, and that this fresh year is bringing you good things. (And because I had fun putting it together this year, I’ll point you to my own video holiday card/personal year in review.)

So what do we have coming up for 2014 in terms of Peanuts books?

Well, there’s two new volumes of The Complete Peanuts, of course… plus the paperback release of volume 1. And there’s the second volume of Peanuts Every Sunday, the all-color complete Sunday collection series.

But that won’t be all for the strip reprints. We’ll be seeing everything from the second of the nice Amp! Comics For Kids books to the baseball strip gift book Batter Up, Charlie Brown to that sizable-and-presumably-expensive book from IDW reproduced from the original art.

For those who like the current run of Peanuts comic books, we’ll see Volume 3 collecting those (and for those keeping track, this will be the first to have any of my stories in it) plus the original graphic novel The Beagle Has Landed, Charlie Brown.

Beyond that, there are at least two of the inspirational Be books being released. And for those who like crafty things, you’ll have the chance to make Peanuts Christmas cookies or play Joe Frankenstein and build your own desktop Peanuts characters! (Hey, the date of that Christmas Cookie release has bounced again, back to April.)

But who knows what else might be coming? There are always some surprises along the way. Perhaps even some new edition of a book adaptation of A Charlie Brown Christmas? Oh, I hope I hope I hope! As a rule, we’re likely to have already seen announcements for licensed books coming out through standard distribution, but we are less likely to know about books from the latter part of the year, or unlicensed books (books of commentary, minor Schulz biographies), or books that get distributed in other ways (like that Big Book of Peanuts that showed up in Costco last year – I’m still looking for an online source for that to point you to. Or Hallmark books.)

This is the point at which I raise the little flag to indicate that this list is not only likely not complete, it may not be a complete list of projects I’m aware of. Due to my business involvement in some books and with some publishers, I am not always free to share knowledge that I may have of unannounced projects.

All in all, it should be a good year… but the year to really look out for is 2015. That’s when the Peanuts movie drops, and I suspect there will be a lot of books released to try to take advantage of the interest it generates.

Happy New Year, everybody!

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