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
A different kind of coffee table book

If you have a coffee table, you should have a “coffee table book”, a large, heavily illustrated color volume that your guests can easily and casually flip through, (Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects is a good choice, of course.) But you …

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 …