To Mom And Dad With Love

New releases

The new kids book To Mom and Dad with Love says that it’s an adaptation of a The Snoopy Show episode “To Mom and Dad with Love”… which is interesting, because as things are sorted on the Apple TV+ service that hosts such things, this isn’t a The Snoopy Show episode. Rather, it’s a stand-alone special, Snoopy Presents: To Mom (and Dad) with Love. Picky, picky, I know.

Anyway, this is not a complete adaptation. It drops the Woodstock storyline and the breakfast-making, focusing rather on the Peppermint Patty storyline center. In reading this version, it struck me just how much that storyline is grounded in the classic Peanuts specials — Peppermint Patty being ambivalent about Mother’s Day is cut from the same cloth as Charlie Brown’s feelings about Christmas. I think that acknowledging that holidays aren’t happy days for everyone is important. And the book — which is text augmented with images straight from the special — does keep in the passing mention that some kids have two moms. It’s s small piece of representation, and in ways, small representation matters.

New releases
Review: Snoopy (Classic Cartoon Character Bios)

The Abdo Kids : Classic Cartoon Character Bios books are blatant stuff-to-fill-school-libraries material. Sturdy hardcovers, lots of pictures, 24 pages, little text – about 250 words. The Snoopy volume uses Snoopy images from just about anywhere: strips (appropriately licensed), animation, photos, The Peanuts Movie publicity materials. And the simple facts it …

New releases
Double Love

Simon Spotlight has dropped two books for the Valentine’s Day Shopping Season, and they’re pretty similar. Love is Everywhere, Snoopy! is a board book that is supposed to be Charlie Brown explaining love to Snoopy (who is said to have asked, which raises the usual how-does-Snoopy-communicate-to-Charlie-Brown question.) Charlie Brown answers …

New releases
“Books”

My grocery shopping today landed me two new Peanuts “books”. The more bookish of the two is the latest edition of The Great Big Book of Peanuts Word Seeks, volume 5 to be precise, which as I’ve mentioned before I’ll allow to qualify as a book… particularly because it not …