This October marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, and the following month we’ve see the release of the first Peanuts movie in thirty years. I’ve noticed this year that there’s a concerted effort at releasing Peanuts books and collections, probably to both tie in with the anniversary and the upcoming film.
One such book is Simon Spotlight’s Meet the Peanuts Gang!, released last week. If you’re a little kid just discovering who the Peanuts characters are or a parent who wants to introduce your children to Schulz’s Peanuts, this book is a good place to start. It’s a ninety-six page book, in full color, with a dozen chapters, each one profiling one of the major Peanuts characters with a short bio, some details about the character, a couple of strips that illustrate the character’s personality, and a quote from Charles Schulz about the character.
It’s a cute book with a lovely presentation, though it’s not for me, the fortysomething Peanuts fan who has all the volumes of Fantagraphics’ The Complete Peanuts published thus far. But it does fill a role, for the child who’s just meeting the Peanuts gang for the first time. That’s who Meet the Peanuts Gang! is for.