The Peanuts books released by Phoenix International Publications (a.k.a. PI Kids) can be hard to detect. They don’t go through the normal book distribution chain. They don’t show up on Amazon or on most other online retailers. Usually, I have to just stumble across them, often at Costco. The book Dance, Snoopy, Dance! apparently came out last year, judging by the copyright date, but it isn’t even listed on the publisher’s own website. I stumbled across it while searching the Toys R Us site.

Like many of PI Kids’s books, this is a book with interactive sound buttons – in this case, a board book with four buttons that play the sound of Woodstock chattering, Snoopy laughing, Charlie Brown saying “Good grief!”, and a clip from the tune “Linus and Lucy”, which play when you push the button with the dancing Snoopy on it.

Pay attention to that dancing Snoopy, because you’ll be seeing that piece of Schulz art (one that is frequently used on products) in this book. Of course, since it’s on the button, it’s also at the three points during the eight-page story that the reader is supposed to press the button. But it’s not just there, because it’s also the main image on the front cover. And the main image on the title page. And the main image on the fourth page of the story. And because the back cover shows a picture of the book open to that fourth page, you see it twice more (the page, and the button). Page seven of the story has a similar shot of the character turned upside-down, but it’s not actually the same drawing, although you have to look closely to tell. (And before anyone asks: the drawing on the new California Snoopy license plates is similar but not the same.)

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