Maybe everyone is unique but me


I have landed my copy of Be Unique, the latest in the “Peanuts Wisdom to Carry You Through” series of full-color gift books, with quotes from the strip (and in one case, directly from Schulz rather than speaking through his characters)  and images inspired by the strip, brought to life by Vicki Scott and Paige Braddock. It is interesting to see them try to draw positive messages from what was not inherently a positive strip; at times, it’s bending it a bit. Peppermint Patty gets quoted for “The world is full of beautiful plants and flowers, but I’m just an ugly weed. I’m a poor ugly weed trying to push her way up through the sidewalk of life!” That is linked to the uplifting message “Be Real”. Ah, the negative self image is a virtue!

But I pick on these books because it’s fun to pick on things. These aren’t books that anyone needs for expanding their understanding of Peanuts, but they are perfectly good for being what they’re designed to be: nice cheap little gift books.

New releases
Peanuts Coloring for Fun and Relaxation

While the days of new books popping up at Costco at any time are soon coming to an end, they have not ended yet. The latest is Peanuts: Coloring for Fun and Relaxation, which as you may get is a coloring book — and “adult coloring book”, as such things go. …

New releases
Peanuts Storybook Treasury

The Peanuts Storybook Treasury slams 18 of the Simon Spotlight storybooks from 2015 through 2021 into a single hardcover volume. In order to get them all into 304 pages, it cheats just a little bit, skipping over the covers and individual copyright pages, and occasionally combining what had been two …

New releases
The line stays drawn

There is much to be said for the modern self-publishing apparatus, but it also makes it mighty easy to offer materials of dubious value. As such, I’ve decided that even in my completism, I needn’t purchase absolutely every Peanuts-related book that someone drops on the public via use of self-publishing …