Home renovations

Someone… well, a group of good folks… sent me a copy of the IMG_1436new edition of Home is On Top of a Dog House, part of a line of reprints of the Happiness is a Warm Puppy series of books. Now, I’d noticed that they’d done cover redesigns form the original, but I hadn’t realized that they were redesigning the innards. Usually, redesigns of something like this would create something more ornate, but this one went the other way around, stripping away the aggressive design of the 1960s original, going for simpler text, less color, remove the framing of the images.

Now me, I’m always rather liked the Determined Productions aesthetics, which I thought went a long way toward making these brief books interesting objects. However, that design has been used on reissues in the not-too-distant past, from the same publisher as this new edition, Cider Mill Press. This doesn’t erase those copies from existence, so I’ve got zero problem with it. But I still prefer the older one. (Although I prefer this to the 1980s expansion/rework.)

There is one move here I find a little odd: they changed the title. Well, kinda. While the title page inside uses the term “Dog House” as with earlier editions, the front cover uses “Doghouse”, no space – and because of the design they used, that term appears a half dozen times across the cover.

New releases
A different kind of coffee table book

If you have a coffee table, you should have a “coffee table book”, a large, heavily illustrated color volume that your guests can easily and casually flip through, (Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects is a good choice, of course.) But you …

New releases
Review: Snoopy (Classic Cartoon Character Bios)

The Abdo Kids : Classic Cartoon Character Bios books are blatant stuff-to-fill-school-libraries material. Sturdy hardcovers, lots of pictures, 24 pages, little text – about 250 words. The Snoopy volume uses Snoopy images from just about anywhere: strips (appropriately licensed), animation, photos, The Peanuts Movie publicity materials. And the simple facts it …

Classic finds
A needle-ssly fine present

Being a) an adult and b) not a Christmasian, it makes sense that I’m not given much in the way of Christmas presents. This year’s haul was just two items, both given by Dr. Mrs. The AAUGH Blogger: a Terry’s Chocolate Orange (yum!), and this Peanuts embroidery book from Japan. …