In one corner, we have Around the World with Charlie Brown, a 1988 Peanuts music book, with simplified music notation and a built-in keyboard. The right-hand page of each spread is a song – mostly old public-domain tunes, although they pay for “Over the Rainbow” and Joe Raposo’s “Sing” (it’s not the first link between the famed Sesame Street songwriter and Peanuts; he was the musical director on the original stage production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.)
And in this corner we have… Around the World with Charlie Brown. Written by Charlie Brown – Charlie Ford Brown, that is – this is an autobiography of a navy man, published through a vanity press in 1975. Zero link to Peanuts.
So why is it I’ve had this obscure, undistributed, older non-Peanuts book for a fair number of years now, and I’ve only just landed a copy of the internationally-distributed genuine Peanuts book?
I blame Congress.