I have been falling behind in listing and reviewing the books that have come in to the AAUGH.com Reference Library. This is in part because I’m busy making several books (including one Peanuts-related one), in part because there are a bunch of board books that came in at roughly the same time, and my buying board books is more a sign that I’m a completist than that I have passion for the individual item. (That’s not a complaint. These books are not aimed at me. They should not be aimed at me. Not everything needs to be for me. The world is better when other people have things for them.) So I’m giving brief, cursor reviews so I can clear them off the table and move forward with my life.

• Kick the Football, Charlie Brown! — remember the baseball-shaped and puck-shaped board books I’ve reviewed of late? Well, I somehow missed one coming out. This is a board book edition of a storybook that came out a decade back and has been reprinted in compilations. One odd thing is that when you start to read the book, you realize that the cover is sideways; apparently they wanted to depict a football as it may lay on the ground, rather than a football that’s teed up like someone is going to kick it… which there’s a drawing of on the cover.
• ABC with Snoopy — After an opening that says “Let’s learn the alphabet”, each page has several letters and a picture of Snoopy that is somehow related to one of the letters (the ABCD page has a picture of Snoopy Dancing) and no other text. Spoiler warning: Z.
• 123 with Snoopy — pages with a number, a picture that has that many of something, and text saying what that is, ranging from “one dog” to “ten friends”. Birds come in at 5; Raymond is not there.
• Colors with Snoopy — one name of a color and an image predominantly in that color on each page. Brown is a large barrel of root beer, and not a picture of Sally or Charlie.
• Shapes with Snoopy — has the names of shapes and an image featuring those shapes. We will not get into an argument of whether the r0unded corners of playing cards should exclude them from being considered rectangles. Kids don’t care.
• Peanuts: My Busy Books — is a fancy one, in that it’s a large board book with a box built into in the back holding a play mat and 10 toy figures with which to play. The book is just an introduction of the characters represented, with each page having a 50 word description of a character and several pictures with them. (Interesting: “Franklin Armstrong” is listed despite that last name never having been used for him in the strip, while “Peppermint Patty” is listed without the last name she was given in the strip. The “Armstrong” name, introduced in animation, is the only non-strip character fact that I can think of that has now achieved “canon” status.) The mat has four scene backgrounds that you can play with the figures on: a sidewalk scene, a baseball diamond, the Kite-Eating Tree, and a pumkin patch. I could certainly see adult fans paying the currently-under-$20 price just for the figures (although if you got the Snoopy Tattle Tales book that came out last month, the four figures in that are repeated in here.)
• Snoopy: My First Puzzle Book is indeed a board book, it’s just that five of the pages (the ones with just images, not the ones with text and an image) break off into pieces. I think it’s important to note that all five of these pages are cut with the same die, so the twelve pieces are the same shape from puzzle to puzzle. They have, wisely, put a picture of the image behind the puzzle pieces, so you can see right where each one goes when reassembling… but don’t let that stand in the way of your artistic instincts!

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