One of the joys I’ve had doing this blog is picking apart some of the biographies of Schulz written for kids, generally sold as part of bulk sets of biographies meant to fill school library shelves, offering light reading for youngsters who need to do book reports.

The problem with doing that now is, well, I have a conflict of interest. Without going into detail, with my publisher’s hat on, I’m likely to be putting out a youth-oriented bio of Schulz in the not-too-distant future. As such, my putting on my blogger hat to pull apart something that might even vaguely be seen as the competition might be seen as practicing unfair competition rather than perfectly fair snarkiness.

Luckily, I don’t have to rip apart the new book Charles Schulz, part of the Children’s Storyteller subline of  Blastoff! Readers books, this one a level 4. Written by Kari Schuetz, this Schuetz-on-Schulz book is a full-color, design-heavy 24 page hardcover. It doesn’t have a lot of text – about 2 paragraphs per page, counting both body text and sidebars – but at least it does it without major errors. It’s not going to have a lot of new information for the sort of folks who are reading this blog, but that’s not its aim; you aren’t its target. The images (photos, strips, and diagrams) run one per page, and are largely well-chosen.

I tried ordering this from Amazon, but they told me they wouldn’t be able to get it. So I ordered it from BN.com, they delivered it just fine… and now I see that Amazon actually has them in stock… for about $6 less than what I paid. Oh, the things I do to make sure I have things to review for you, my loyal reader!

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