The big shipment of Peanuts books included the Little Golden Book Snoopy and Friends (that’s an ordering link) and the shaped board book Snoopy and Friends! (that, too), which you may remember are the final two of the three books titled Snoopy and Friends coming out this year. And while they’re both based on the upcoming The Peanuts Movie, they take very different views. Really, reading the text of the Golden Book, it’s really about Charlie Brown and his friends; most of the characters are discussed in relation to Charlie Brown. The board book is relatively wise about who Snoopy’s friends are – it covers birds, and dogs (mostly Snoopy’s siblings), but the only human that it discusses in the context of being friends with Snoopy is Charlie Brown… which seems legitimate based on the movie (or at least on what I’ve seen on it in trailers) , even if that is a bit at odds with most of the run of the strip (there’s stuff in the 1990s where Charlie Brown and Snoopy would lump out near the tree together, but before that, Snoopy seemed largely a burden, and Snoopy couldn’t be bothered remembering his owner’s name.)

Both books take from what is presumably a fixed set of graphics available for the Peanuts movie, so for example the shot of Spike is the same in most books. More blatantly, the character pose on the cover of the Golden Book is the same as on the last page of the board book, although they do use different backgrounds. But the look of the material is cool, and a viable addition to the range of looks of Peanuts books.

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