Franken-Snoopy review

New releases

The latest storybook from Hallmark is The Nightmare of Franken-Snoopy, in which Charlie Brown falls into a dream where Snoopy is a monster, Linus is a mummy, Schroeder and Lucy are vampires, and what do they all do? Nothing monstrous, this is a gentle kids book, so they all go trick or treating. The Charlie Brown wakes up. Then he goes back to sleep. Why? Because this is one of those books where there’s a single pop-up on the final page, so he has to be back in monster land for the pop-up to be interesting. The pictures, by Rich LaPierre, are his usual high-quality work. The story… well, it’s actually a poem, or at least doggerel … is just enough to get to the characters they want to show. The rhythm is a little tricky – if you’re reading this out loud, you’ll probably pause between stanzas to figure out how to read the next one with a rhythm that works for rhyming. Is the story good? Well, I can’t say it grabbed me, but then I’m a mumblty-old man and should not be considered the prime target for this. But it’s much better in words and pictures than that AI-created book which I reviewed the other day.

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 …