From the Bookshelf: Schulz's Youth

"The Complete Peanuts," with its promise of reprinting all the Peanuts comics strips, may have helped touch off a whole series of efforts to reprint other bits of "Schulz-iana." In the last little while, I've noticed and managed to get a book collecting the "Li'l Folks" cartoon panels Charles M. Schulz drew for a Minnesota newspaper in the late 1940s before getting his big chance, a smaller volume reprinting a little-known sports-themed cartoon panel "It's Only A Game" that ran for about a year in the late 1950s (of which a little more later), and some small books of adages featuring the Peanuts characters reprinted from the 1960s. It may, I suppose, be a sign of a completionist urge, yet one cheap enough to not bother about searching out vintage printings. In any case, though, I've recently managed to pick up another book, titled "Schulz's Youth." I think I've noticed some pointing out that the title might be a little misleading: it's not drawings from Charles M. Schulz's own youth, but a series of cartoon panels featuring teenagers he drew in the 1950s and 1960s, interestingly (or oddly) enough for the small market of his church's magazine. Jerry Scott, writer of the modern comic strip "Zits," contributes a brief foreword to the book commenting that Schulz's youth have good posture and are very polite... and I did have to wonder if their being good churchgoers had a little to do with that.
( 'We disagree theologically.... He thinks he's perfect, and I think he isn't!' )