A Charlie Brown Christmas keeps popping up!

Animated Peanuts

img_0531The second (and not the last) of my new book editions of A Charlie Brown Christmas for this year is A Charlie Brown Christmas: A Hallmark Lighted Pop-up Book, available at better Hallmark stores now. Or soon. Mine didn’t have it on the shelf (yet?), but I ordered it online.

This one tells the tale via six pop-ups and six pages of text, so it’s a fairly simple version, (And lest anyone suggest it: no, it does not skip Linus’s quoting of Gospel. I’ve heard people claim repeatedly over the years that any shortening of the TV special, on air or in book form, would do away with the speech, because of a presumed conspiracy against Christianity. To the best of my knowledge, it has never happened.) The lighted pop-ups are nice, but the effect doesn’t have as much impact as one might hope. They never manage to use the light effect to light up the Christmas lights decorating Snoopy’s doghouse or the trees, but they do in one shot light up the stars in the sky… and one star that is somehow in Violet’s hair.

img_0535Still, it’s basically a pretty cool book… and, like always, I look forward to seeing what Hallmark does with next year’s adaptation!

img_0532

Share the news!
Animated Peanuts
A Summer Musical: The Dolores Report

The animated special Peanuts: A Summer Musical is coming out on Friday, as discussed before. And yet here I am on Thursday, covering it. What sort of secret inside access did I have that let’s me do this? Easy, I live on the West Coast. It’s already Friday on the East …

Animated Peanuts
Dolores CONFIRMED!

That is genuinely Dolores, the obscure Latina Peanuts character from the filmstrips, in the new special that releases this coming Friday. I’ve had it confirmed by the director of the special, who is half Latin himself. He indicates that she will not be the only character of such heritage in …

Animated Peanuts
Officially, it’s a “Super Chubby”

When I reviewed the 2015 book adapting the TV special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, I had this to say: The book that’s titled It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (adaptation by Kara McMahon, art by Scott Jeralds) takes basically the whole special and simplifies everything. It briefly tells you that Charlie …