The thing it understand about the new hardcover Where’s Snoopy: A Search-and-Find Book by Natalie Shaw and Scott Jeralds is that this isn’t really a puzzle book a la Where’s Waldo? or some of those books of richly detailed photographs where it really takes careful poring over to locate the missing items. No, this is more a “do you understand words?” book to be read to the pre-reading set. The book has ten spreads drawn in a big, open, Peanuts style, each with a little description of what’s going on in the spread (but not in such a way that a story is told across the spreads) and a list of things to find on the page. With rare exceptions, the item to be sought for are in no way obscure. If you’re in a baseball scene and looking for “a green baseball cap”, that’s just a matter of knowing what “green” and “baseball cap” mean and seeing which of the ten characters in the spread is wearing such a thing.

And in that category, the Peanuts-y-ness of the whole thing makes it a little odd. Are the young uns that this is aimed for going to know what a “typewriter” looks like? If they haven’t been richly invested in Peanuts already, do they understand what an “advice booth” is?

But kids like it when you sit with them and go through books, and by the fifth time you go through this with them, I’m sure they’ll know to point to the booth marked “psychiatric help” when you say “advice booth”. They’ll know which one Peppermint Patty is.

Hey, you want a pointless Nat nitpick? Of course you do. That’s part of what this blog is for, right? Well, it’s this spread:

That mailbox in the middle, the one that’s partway up the walkway to the house? That’s not where that kind of a mailbox goes. Generally you’ll see these out at the curb, so that the postal carrier can just reach out of his postal vehicle and put mail into the box. In fact, that’s the very reason why mail trucks have the steering wheel on the right (by which I mean “wrong”) side, so that it’ll be right next to mailboxes of this kind.

Also, the flag on the mailbox is pointing up, and if you flipped it up would be pointing toward the road. This is fine in Peanuts continuity, as Schulz drew mailboxes with flags pointing in either direction at times. However, in the real world, the flags point down, so when flipped up, they point away from the road. Checking myself through a photo search, I find only a couple photos where that is not true… and those look like the could be AI-generated. (The flags, for those not in the know, are used to indicate whether there is mail in the box.)

Say didja ever notice that Charlie Brown’s house has both a mailbox out front and a mail slot in the front door?

*****

So, it’s the Christmas and Hanukah shopping season. I didn’t do my usual wise-and-helpful gift thoughts post this year… but forgive me for reminding folks that one way you can support this blog is simply to click a link from here as your way for getting to Amazon for any shopping that you might be doing. Whatever you purchase there ends up sending a kickback to me, which helps support things like the many books I purchase so I have something to blog about. And hey, if you’re looking for Peanutsy gifts at the moment, you could do worse than:

• The Essential Peanuts, the big 75th anniversary book
• The 75th Anniversary Blu Ray set of TV specials
• A Joe Cool sweatshirt
• a 2026 day-by-day calendar

And hey, if you’ve got a crossword puzzle fan on your gift list, don’t worry about figuring out which book of the latest puzzles they don’t already have. Instead, get my latest book Cross Word Craze, which is a collection of crossword puzzles from the early 1920s, when the “cross word puzzle” was a big fad impacting not only newspapers, but fashion, film, and more! The book has not only 100 puzzles (with solutions, of course), but also 100 crossword-themed clippins from the newspapers of the day — articles, ads, cartoons, and more! I’m pretty proud of this one.

Share the news!