Today’s trivia question comes in two parts, each of which has two clauses.

1. Who is this a drawing of, and what is his relationship to Peanuts?
2. Who is the artist of the drawing, and what is his relationship to Peanuts?

Don’t worry, there’s no Peanuts shame if you don’t get these. It’s not key knowledge you’d have gleaned from the strip or the specials.

The drawing is of country musician Faron Young, who had hits from the 1950s into the 1970s. His relevancy to Peanuts is that he inspired the name Faron, for Frieda’s notably bone-free cat who briefly graced the strip.

The artist of this show is David Liverett. His Peanuts relevancy is that he authored They Called Him Sparky, the book of reminiscences of Schulz’s involvement with the Church of God.

Now, the reason that I called this question tricky was not just to note that it was difficult, it was because I was pulling a trick. If was trying to find some legitimate excuse to bring up Liverett and his art. That’s because lately I’ve been helping the artist get back into distribution some books that he had self-published. This particular image is from Those Grand Ole Country Music Stars, a book with one-page biographies of literally hundreds of country musicians, from Roy Acuff to, well, Faron Young, who brings up the rear in the book’s alphabetic order. We’ve also made available three of his other books, each of which are filled with spiritual, inspirational essays by a number of Christian writers paired with images drawn by Liverett. There’s When Hope Shines Through, with its lovely images of lighthouses; Light from the Barn, with drawings of (you guessed it) barns, and Questions for God, in which each of the essays on the questions that they have for God is illustrated with a portrait of the essayist.

David has a couple more books that I hope to make available again soon. But for now, if these sound like your kind of thing… there they are!

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