I’ve got some catching up to do for the blog… and as so often happens, I seem to be doing it in what programmers called LIFO order — last in, first out. That’s what happens when you take the thing off the top of the stack you’ve been building, instead of digging to the bottom.

Today I received the biography Charles Schulz, part of the Abdo Kids Jumbo Children’s Authors set. This hardcover is 11 inches wide, nine inches high, and has a biography of just over 200 words… but they are accurate words, if not particularly in depth. Each page spread is accompanied by a photo or image, although sometimes the photos are… well, I won’t say inaccurate, but potentially misleading, such as a spread about what Schulz was doing in the 1940s accompanied by a photo of him from the 1960s. But that’s the sort of precision that I don’t think we need to worry about for the target audience, who is much younger and cuter than I. The images even include a few properly-licensed scenes from the animated Peanuts, and two strips.

But on the very first page, there’s this:

That surely is not Schulz, nor is it an animated piece. I’d be surprised if that was an authorized piece of art at all. It looks like someone tried to outline Snoopy and Woodstock using the Adobe Illustrator program. Now, I could see doing an original drawing if the entire book was original drawings, but if there’s just one or two (there’s a later picture I suspect as well) in a book otherwise including licensed Peanuts images, it just seems a bit odd.

Obviously, this is not a biography that any hardcore Peanuts fan needs unless they collect biographies (that’s me!) But if you want a copy, you can order it here.

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