Writing Japanese, I think I’m writing Japanese, I really think so…

New releases

My main goal of ordering Peanuts books from Japan was to get a copy of the new Japanese edition of Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects, the book that I co-wrote for the Schulz Museum. After all, I want to have Peanuts books and I want to have books that I’ve written, even in other languages, so I needed a copy of this…and publishers are not always well organized when it comes to getting writers foreign editions. The book is large — as large as the English edition, and it actually needs the space more, because whenever there’s a picture of something with text on it, whether it’s a comic strip or a letter from Schulz, they need to put the Japanese translation beside the image.

I’ve had my books translated into other languages before, and it is always weird to see text that I wrote — in this case, even text that bears my printed signature — that I cannot read. When I set to purchase this, I thought it was the first time I’d be translated in Japanese… but I was wrong. More on that to come.

 

New releases
A pop-up shows up

Here Comes Charlie Brown!: A Peanuts Pop-up, Gene Kannenberg, Jr.’s adaptation of the very first Peanuts strip, is not the first Peanuts book to reprint only a single strip. There was at least one board book that did much the same thing. However, that board book was, at heart, a …

New releases
Look! A mook!

Mooks – that is, items with magazine-like content but sold more like a book – are popular in Japan. Many of them come bundled with extra items, and there have been a fair number with Peanuts items. Most often these are bags – a handbag or a tote of some …

New releases
Bringing up the rear

I’m interrupting my coverage of the shipment of books I got from Japan to cover another foreign book that just arrived. Now, I don’t try to collect every foreign Peanuts book. My collection is out of control as it is. I try to find books in languages that I don’t …