The new volume Peanuts: The Poster Book isn’t quite what I expected. When I think “poster book”, I think of a big paperback filled with pics-and-slogans designed to be hung up in a teenybopper’s room.

But this, which turns out to be a British volume, changes format and target. Format, in that it is curiously a hardcover volume. (Generally, one is not worried about poster books being permanently protected, as you’re going to just rip the pages out.) And the design sensibility turns out not to be “posters” but “art prints”, So no “Happiness is a Warm Puppy”, no “Why do mornings start too early?” with the picture of a beleaguered Snoopy. (Among the 20 pictures, the only words are “It was a dark and stormy night.”, one “AAUGH!”, and the signage on the psychiatric booth… unless one counts a Woodstock word balloon as words. And no edge-to-edge color. Some of the figures are colored, but none of the backgrounds are, and quarter of the images are just pure black-and-white. If 20 of these 11″ by 14″ images is what you’re looking for, then this is where you’ll find them!

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