After my recent post on next year’s book edition of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, alert AAUGH reader Scott tipped me off that there was a new hardcover of that popping up in Hallmark stores. So I hied myself over to the local Hallmark (I find that hieing is easier than shimmying, or even sauntering) to find out for myself.
And indeed the word was true. It looks like it’s the new edition, in that the packaging looks a lot like last year’s Hallmark edition of the Running Press “deluxe” adaptation of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Flipping open to the interiors, however, quickly showed a notable difference. This isn’t the slickly-rendered computer color work of that Christmas adaptation. This looks more old-fashioned, more traditional. Checking the credits… text by Ron & Justine Fontes? Art by Paige Braddock? Hey, wait, we already had an adaptation by those folks!
So I rush to the finally-unpacked AAUGH.com reference library and pulled down the 2001 Little Simon adaptation. The text is exactly the same. The art isn’t. Braddock’s earlier adaptation was all original drawings, all with a line style meant to simulate Schulz’s 1990s drawings, and all watercolored. This is a completely redrawn piece, meant to look like Schulz of the era of the special, the 1960s. In fact, I think a lot of the figures are actual Schulz figures, repurposed from elsewhere, although some of the work is clearly Braddock.
All in all, I like this style of adaptation. It makes It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown look like, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

This book is available at Hallmark Gold Crown Stores. It is not available through their website. The price is $14.95 (thought that would be hard to know; they hide the price on a sticker on the inside back cover.) Or wait until next year for what is presumably the bookstore edition of the same adaptation; the bookstore version of the A Charlie Brown Christmas adaptation was larger and on better paper.

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