Review: Peanuts Lunch Bag Cookbook
The latest Peanuts cookbook, Peanuts Lunch Bag Cookbook, is another hardcover from the same folks who brought us the Peanuts Family Cookbook, and as with that one, this is a physically lovely item. Dozens of recipes with sometimes goofily Peanuts-y names, each accompanied with a relevant daily strip. On the facing …
Review: Be Thankful, Be Giving
I don’t think I’ve ever wished to give books letter grades before, but it would be fun to write Be Thankful, Be Giving: B+. I’m not saying that’s accurate, I’m saying that’d be fun to write. Be Thankful, Be Giving is a D-shaped Thanksgiving-themed board book. For a board book, they …
Review: Let’s Go to the Library!
The new “Ready-to-Read Level Two” storybook Let’s Go to the Library! is officially “by Charles M. Schulz, adapted by May Nakamura, illustrated by Robert Pope”, and it’s actually valid to call it an adaptation (which is not true of some of these storybooks.) This tale of Sally’s first trip to …
Review: Snoopy Goes to Space
The “book and flashlight set” Snoopy Goes to Space is another boxed set item from Phoenix International. The book is one of those sound-button books for kids, where as you read, the text include pictures of buttons to push. Push the button, and you get the appropriate sound effect. The …
Review: Better Together
Better Together is a recent Hallmark release that bridges halfway between a pictures-and-aphorisms book like Happiness is a Warm Puppy and a strip collection. The square book is a series of spreads of Peanuts strips (really, Snoopy strips; the dog is in every one of them) paired with an aphorism on friendship. …
Cynical Supersnoop
Working in the comics field and being a long-time reader of comic books, I’ve grown accustomed to the darker, cynical take on superheroes, depicting them with twisted motivations and deleterious effect. At times, it is quite well done (as in Watchmen); at other times, it’s a weak attempt deconstruction (like …
The phantom Big Books of Peanuts
I get this question from time to time… is there any plans for a fifth and final Big Book of Peanuts? For those who have not seen this series, there were four volumes of The Big Book of Peanuts issued, each a hardback that included all of the Peanuts dailies (i.e., not …
Translating Schulz into English
AAUGH Blog reader David wrote me to ask about some odd lettering in a few of the strips that were reprinted in Charles M. Schulz: 40 Years of Life and Art, a big slipcased book that came out for the fortieth anniversary of Peanuts, so three decades ago. It’s just …
Charlie Brown’s World
I just got a copy of Charlie Brown’s World, one of a set of keyring-based strip reprints that Hallmark issued in 1970 (a set which, with the help of a particularly generous AAUGH Blog reader, I now have most of, but still not all.) These books reprint strips, one panel per …
Maybe they’re Martian years
Following up on my recent review of Snoopy: A Beagle of Mars (a title which, by the way, is an Edgar Rice Burroughs reference): several people gave me confirmation that physical copies of the book actually did come out last December. This is a second (or later) printing. However, they changed …