I’m already on the record as liking the Amp! Comics For Kids line, as you can see in my review of the first volume in the series, Snoopy: Cowabunga!. Let me stick with that review, in general – these full-color strip collections of reasonable thickness, at a reasonable price, and with several extra features (flip-book edges, pages suggesting activities, and an enclosed poster) are very nice packages aimed at the younger reader of Peanuts. I would not hesitate to give either that volume or the one I just got, Charlie Brown and Friends, to  kid who I wanted to expose to Peanuts.

Having said that, I have decided that they have one feature too many, and that that feature is causing problems, albeit slight. It’s the flip-book aspect: turn the books sideways and flip the pages, and you’ll see an animation. A very simple animation; the very basic cycle of Snoopy running that is repeated in the Snoopy book looks like M.C Esher in motion when compared to the one in the new book, of a ball, bouncing. So it’s not a great feature, but why is it a problem? Because in order to put the animation at the outside edge for the page, they had to push the art to the inside edge, which means that the art is on the part of the page that is heavily curved toward the binding when the book is open. It’s not the best way of presenting the art, and certainly not worth the minimal benefit added by the animation.

But hey, I’m just expressing my fascination with a detail. What we have here is a reasonable collection of strips from 1973 and 1974 with the coloring from when they were reprinted in the papers in 2000 and 2001. Despite the title, it isn’t so much a Charlie Brown-heavy book as it is a Snoopy-light one; there’s some Snoopy, but they used up many of the Snoopy strips from the period in the earlier book.

There is an episode of the TV sitcom Frasier where Frasier and his brother Niles agree that the only thing better than a great meal is a great meal with one niggling thing wrong that you can pick apart later. Consider this review to be like that; this is a good book which will serve its intended audience well.

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