The new book adaptation of the animated special It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is a slick production. The cover is embossed, with foil highlights and French flaps (that’s where the covers of a paperback are folded in to create inside flaps.

The credits of the book are:

By Charles M. Schulz

Based on the animated special, the text was adapted by Daphne Pendergrass

Illustrated by Vicki Scott

…which is odd phrasing, with that sentency second line. But then, this book has odd phrasing in general: the story is told in the present tense. The opening sentence is “The winter snow has melted, the birds are tweet-tweet-tweeting in the trees, and all the flowers are in bloom – it’s Easter time, and the whole neighborhood is getting ready!” That’s not how fiction books generally work; they’re almost always written in the past tense. “The winter snow had melted, the birders were tweet-tweet-tweeting,” and so forth. But for some reason, Simon & Schuster has been putting all of their Peanuts books in the present tense.

Scott’s art always seems to have some of the extra energy of the Melendez-animated Peanuts work, even when she’s working on the comic books rather than an animation adaptation like this.

All in all, this book does well what it’s supposed to do, telling the story from the animated special, not skimping on the Marcie & Peppermint Patty parts with the failed egg production efforts.

Share the news!