The English language is structured for creativity, not for precision engineering. Too many phrases are ambiguous. When I tell my wife “I can’t love you any more!”, am I noting that I used to love her, but am no longer capable of doing so? Or am I telling her that my love is turned up to 100%, that I am utterly and totally in love with her? I’m not telling. Not even her.
The actually cover has shiny stuff instead of white on the lace (which is a good effect) and the title (which makes it hard to read.)
The title to Who’s Your Valentine, Charlie Brown? is similar. Is it asking “Charlie Brown, who is your valentine?” Or is it “Is your valentine Charlie Brown?” Looking at the cover, if the question is the former, then it is aimed at Charlie Brown; if the latter, it’s aimed at Snoopy in which case that might not seem to be a reasonable question. But then one starts to think about what “valentine” means in this context. After all, in some contexts it means simply a Valentine’s Day card; when we speaking of school children giving each other “valentines”, we just mean the card. But those cards often say “be my valentine”, so clearly it’s a request for some personal relationship, and as it turns out, the question is a very good one, because (and I’m going to have to spoil the ending of this 10-page heart-shaped board book here) the climax of the story is that Snoopy gives Charlie Brown a Valentine’s Day card. Apparently, he is requesting that Charlie Brown become his valentine! So the ambiguity of the title is never settled; it is neither lady nor tiger but rests in the same state of uncertainty as Schroedinger’s cat.
This masterpiece of ambiguity is writ by Tina Gallo and illustrated by Vicki Scott.
As some of you know, the color collection of Schulz’s late-1950s newspaper feature It’s Only a Game that I published in 2013 is a bit weird — namely, the book’s spine is not on the left, as with a normal English book. No, the spine is on the top, and …
The board book Letters to the Great Pumpkin is fairly straightforward on its goals. Linus decides that a letter-writing campaign is just the thing to get that legendary gourd to appear in his pumpkin patch, and various Peanuts characters each write a letter to the Great Pumpkin that reflects their personality …
I just picked up a copy of The World According to Snoopy, which was released in the UK late last year. This hardcover book, with its cover akin to a 1970s textbook, falls into the “inspirational messages” category. It’s pages are a mix of single-page displays of individual Peanuts strips (always …
