“But WAIT!” I hear you cry. “If Sweet Dreams, Snoopy is just a shortening of the Snoopy’s Doghouse Library book of the same name, perhaps other Wendy’s Kid’s Meal books are just shortenings of books from that esteemed library!”

First off, you’re becoming obsessed. I can hear your voices screaming about this, echoing in my brain all day and all night, and it’s driving me loopy. Stop it, I say, stop it! Perhaps you should see a psychiatrist about this obsession. But for this one question, I shall indulge you.

The Kid’s Meal book The World Famous Snoopy is the same concept as the Doghouse Library book Meet Snoopy!, showcasing Snoopy in his various roles. However, they don’t use any of the same art, and both have Snoopy in guises that the other one doesn’t (the older volume has no X-Treme Skateboarder, for example. So similar in concept, yes, but not a reprint or abridgment.

The Kids’s Meal book Favorite Things is similarly quite alike in concept to the Doghouse library book My Favorite Things, showing pictures of various characters and their favorite things… and yet, the lists are different. Is Snoopy’s favorite thing camping (in the older volume), or cookies (in the newer one?) Is Schroeder’s favorite thing the piano, or music?  And really, how fair is it to say that Charlie Brown’s favorite things is sports while showing a picture of all his clothes getting tossed off by a line drive, as the new volume shows?

So all in all, I’d say that these two volumes are reworks of the Doghouse Library books, no more to be considered the same book as the various different graphic adaptations of A Charlie Brown Christmas should be considered the same book. Of course, that leaves the other book, All About Me, which as we’ve already established is not a rework of an earlier book of the same name. And we have the still open question… are there more books to come, and if so, are they new or derived titles. Oh, will the voices in my head never go away?!?

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