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A series of small square books by Charles M. Schulz from the 1960s is now being reprinted by Cider Mill Press. When I first started spotting them in bookstores, they caught my attention. I knew about them (many have heard the phrase "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy," the title of the first book in the series, and there were photographs of a sketchbook of ideas for the book "I Need All The Friends I Can Get" in the book "Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz"), but I'd never actually read any of them. They seemed cheap enough, so I started buying them. With the approaching holiday, I recently picked up another one in the series called "Christmas Is Together-Time."
The book, like the others, is a collection of brief aphorisms with the Peanuts characters illustrating them on the facing page. In this case, given the season they illustrate, the pages are red or green, the green dark enough to suggest good lighting might be useful. The drawings, though, (so far as I can tell) are original and not repurposed from the comic strips, and the effect is as pleasant as ever.
One thing that interested me about the book was that it deals with the whole range of Christmas. With a book like "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy" or "Security Is A Thumb and A Blanket," the emphasis is on being upbeat, but along with sayings like "Christmas is when you hug your little brother" and "Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone," there's also "Christmas is that awful feeling that another year has gone by" and "Christmas is losing your mother downtown in a crowded store." There are also some references to religion such as "Christmas is wishing you could have seen the Star of Bethlehem," but not to obtrusive effect. With that said, one thought I've started having about "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is that it's not necessarily just about piety versus commercialism, but also about unrealised introspection versus forced excess. No doubt the subtlety has added something to its staying power.
The book, like the others, is a collection of brief aphorisms with the Peanuts characters illustrating them on the facing page. In this case, given the season they illustrate, the pages are red or green, the green dark enough to suggest good lighting might be useful. The drawings, though, (so far as I can tell) are original and not repurposed from the comic strips, and the effect is as pleasant as ever.
One thing that interested me about the book was that it deals with the whole range of Christmas. With a book like "Happiness Is A Warm Puppy" or "Security Is A Thumb and A Blanket," the emphasis is on being upbeat, but along with sayings like "Christmas is when you hug your little brother" and "Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone," there's also "Christmas is that awful feeling that another year has gone by" and "Christmas is losing your mother downtown in a crowded store." There are also some references to religion such as "Christmas is wishing you could have seen the Star of Bethlehem," but not to obtrusive effect. With that said, one thought I've started having about "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is that it's not necessarily just about piety versus commercialism, but also about unrealised introspection versus forced excess. No doubt the subtlety has added something to its staying power.