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.

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