Happiness is a Warm _______

Greatest hits

 

Coming out next May (on May 4th, actually, which is Star Wars Day – a fact that is utterly irrelevant in this context) is Happiness Is Having a Friend, which is, we are told, a Peanuts “fill-in book”. What precisely is that? It’s a book that you’re not meant to buy for yourself, but rather a book you buy to give someone else. It is filled with incomplete phrases that you finish off, and then give to your friend to let them know how you feel about them. And my immediate thought was “oh no, I hope this doesn’t end up being like those Mad Libs books in fifth grade, where every blank gets filled in with some variation of the word ‘fart’!”

But then I paused and considered… these aren’t like the Mad Libs pages, where someone is being asked to give a word without having any context. And this is intended as something that you’d give to a friend, someone you’d care about. Nobody is going to fill one of these out full of farts.

And then I saw sample pages not from this Peanuts book (which are not available to be seen yet), but from the Friends equivalent from the same publisher, Friends: The One About You: A Fill-In Book.

So, so, ohhhhhh so many of these will end up being filled with fart references, cover-to-cover.

Joey would approve.

Upcoming releases
A book I’d not expected to resurface

Back in 2011, Schulz’s granddaughter Dena Hodges issued the first two chapters of  a memoir called In the Shadow of the Family Dog. As I noted in my review at the time, the chapter and the description of the project made it clear that the focus was her relationship with …

Upcoming releases
A box of squares

This May, Fantagraphics is collecting the various small square Peanuts books they’ve published into a new box set, Peanuts All Year Round Mini Collection. This includes: A Valentine for Charlie Brown — Valentine’s Day and romance strips Batter-Up Charlie Brown! — baseball strips Waiting for the Great Pumpkin — Halloween …

Upcoming releases
Game Day returns

Back in 2020, Fantagraphics dropped Game Day, a boxed set of sports-themes Peanuts strip reprint paperbackss, as a Costco exclusive. Next June it’s coming back, this time in hardcover and available through the usual sources. Designed as a Father’s Day gift, it should be good for anyone who likes Peanuts …