Now, let me make something clear. I am not a Peanuts collector. I am a Peanuts book collector. While I may accumulate other Peanuts stuff in various ways, I have no goal of having a complete set of anything or a great array of everything or any such things. In the interest of my available funds, available space, the available reservoirs of willingness-to-humor-Nat’s-insanity which is found in my loved ones, I do not collect the various googaws, the various Christmas ornaments, the wide assortment of statuary or stuffed versions of he characters.

So why did I just by a stuffed Snoopy? Simple: because he’s reading a book. And not just any book, he’s reading a Peanuts book!

And to be clear, he’s not just reading some generic Peanuts book. He’s reading a specific Peanuts book: The Peanuts Guide to School Days, which was the first in a series of activity books published by Scholastic. It even has the publisher’s name and logo on the back cover.

That sort of specificity leads me to suspect that this (an eBay find) was not a standard stuffed critter release being offered through retail outlets. It looks more like a promo item of some sort, whether it was being simply given to people to encourage the sales of this particular book series, or whether it was a special offer where a subscription to the series got you a free stuffed Snoopy, or what.

But it should be noted that the book doesn’t have the actual contents of The Peanuts Guide to School Days. No, as you’ll see in the photo here, the book depicts a series of jagged diagonal lines. It’s like… ohmigoodness, it is! Snoopy is reading about the design of Charlie Brown’s shirt! (Surely a topic to keep a stuffed animal in stitches.)

Now, if I were to be designing such a toy, with Snoopy reading a Peanuts book, this is not the volume which I would have chosen. What should Snoopy be reading? All About Me, of course!

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