The Constitution has you vote on a Peanuts character
In 1959, the Constitution called upon Americans to vote for a Peanuts character. Now I should note that this isn’t the United States Constitution. Rather, it was the Atlanta Constitution, a popular newspaper. They wanted 25-words-or-less essays on who your favorite Peanuts character was and why. The winning character would get, …
Happiness should be shared
Here is a never-reprinted Peanuts strip we somehow left out of The Complete Peanuts! That Schulz, what a genius! (The invocation of capitalized “Happiness” in a 1959 ad, well before “Happiness is a warm puppy” was said in the strip and thus linked Peanuts to the happiness theme, may seem …
Schulz’s Public Spirit No. 1
In January 1962, newspapers began running this Charles Schulz piece promoting… newspapers! Yes, newspapers were very special, and newspapers wanted you to know that. Some papers ran it in full color in the Sunday funnies, others ran it in just black-and-white line art or in greyscale in the main sections. …
Hell no, Kitty.
AAUGH Blog reader Érico asked if I might comment on something on the Sanrio website, specifically in a message from founder and chairman Shintaro Tsuji, which includes this reminiscence: Mr. Schulz cheerfully welcomed these two Japanese men who had suddenly come to visit him, and that was the start of …
As long as we’re in A Charlie Brown Christmas book season
I was recently looking over some of the coverage of the Schulzes opening their ice rink in Santa Rosa, and I noticed that a couple of papers had added illustrations. One used this picture: …which is pretty obviously a narrowed tracing of this Dale Hale drawing from the first book …
Mystery solved
Up until today, I only had a guess of the year that this boxed set, With LOVE from Charlie Brown, collecting six World Publishing adaptations of animated Peanuts specials was issued. But today, I found this ad, which ran in the magazine insert Family Weekly, which was included in various newspapers on …
The Best Time of the Year
Longtime readers of the blog know that my favorite time of the year is when the new book adaptations of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas arrive, and that in the current century, that usually means that I have several such joyous days per year. This year’s first such day brings …
Review: Nest Friends & When Snoopy Met Woodstock
Newly released are two children’s storybooks in the Ready*To*Read line: Nest Friends and When Snoopy Met Woodstock. Both of these are adaptations of stories from The Snoopy Show, the currently running original animated series on the Apple TV+ streaming service. Rather than commissioning new art, the adaptation just has Ximena Hastings adapting …
Reprints… exciting and new!
The wavy lines on the cover of the upcoming rerelease of the classic Peanuts gift book Security is a Thumb and a Blanket make me think of the ocean. Which then makes me see the circular logo space as a porthole. Which, in turn, makes me view the entire cover as …
The writer of BE MORE CHARLIE BROWN is…
…it’s me. I’m writing Be More Charlie Brown, the follow-up to Be More Snoopy, which I also wrote. I doubt many of you are surprised. I’m sorry that I had to be circumspect earlier, but as the author name was not part of the metadata that the publisher had issued …