Linus, visionary

There are some more kids storybooks coming up later this year. In August, we learn that Lucy Knows Best, with Kama Einhorn on adaptation and my occasional collaborator Robert Pope on the art. (For one of Robert’s non-Peanuts books, the About The Author section claims that he is a theologian at a university in Wales… all of which came as news to him.)

Then, in the last month of the year, we get into Linus Gets Glasses, adapted by Sheri Tan and again drawn by Pope. This gets into some stuff I love, all of he struggles of Linus with his glasses, from his watching-television-while-eating-potato-chip-driven discovery of their necessity all the way through Schulz writing them out of the strip in one funny and up-front daily strip. (Of course, I was bespectacled in my youth, a situation that continues to this day, so I may have felt extra empathy for the middle Van Pelt.)

LinusGetsGlasses

Upcoming releases
A book I’d not expected to resurface

Back in 2011, Schulz’s granddaughter Dena Hodges issued the first two chapters of  a memoir called In the Shadow of the Family Dog. As I noted in my review at the time, the chapter and the description of the project made it clear that the focus was her relationship with …

Upcoming releases
A box of squares

This May, Fantagraphics is collecting the various small square Peanuts books they’ve published into a new box set, Peanuts All Year Round Mini Collection. This includes: A Valentine for Charlie Brown — Valentine’s Day and romance strips Batter-Up Charlie Brown! — baseball strips Waiting for the Great Pumpkin — Halloween …

Upcoming releases
Game Day returns

Back in 2020, Fantagraphics dropped Game Day, a boxed set of sports-themes Peanuts strip reprint paperbackss, as a Costco exclusive. Next June it’s coming back, this time in hardcover and available through the usual sources. Designed as a Father’s Day gift, it should be good for anyone who likes Peanuts …