[.ca] Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz (ISBN 0375420975)

This is the BEST one!!!:
I bought this book first of all because I am a fan of Peanuts and because I am 15 years old and I don't like to read, but my mom tells me to read all the time. Comics are the only thing I read, Peanuts comics, obviously. My book hasn't arrive yet, but I saw part of it in Borders and I fell in love with it. I think is the best one, and the vintage drawings gives it a special and unique look that other books do not have. I can't wait for it to arrive. I suggest all of you to buy it. You will like it as much as I do, I can assure that. I gave this book 5 stars!! It really deservs them!! ;-)

This is not really for comics fans...:
I bought this because there is currently no other collection of Schulz's earliest Peanuts strips being published. I certainly like the book for what it is - an art book. The wealth of material inside is fantastic, and the book focuses on the strip in a holistic way, examining its influence on pop culture as well as presenting a good overview of the actual strip. However, and this is extremely crucial, this is NOT a book to buy if one wants a good collection of older Peanuts material to read and reread. Most of the strips are just photos of old newspaper clippings (I'm not quite sure what they were going for there) and hundreds of them are reprinted so small that they hurt your eyes. Also, there is virtually no continuity among the reprints. They just seem to be a random collection of the book's creator's favorites. If you are a serious fan of comics and a serious fan of Peanuts in particular, save your money for the Fantagraphics-published Peanuts albums that are coming out in April, 2004. I'm keeping this book until they do come out, and then I'm giving it to someone who's an art student with better eyesight than me (who might appreciate it a little more).

Sheer genius:
Charles Schulz. In one word...genius. It may be safe to say that I learned much about life from Peanuts. At the very least, I was able to see the humor in it. It's definitely safe to say that Charles Schulz is my all-time hero for one reason: an ordinary man through a simple medium was able to affect so many people by making them aware of what it means to live and what it means to be human. This is the obvious reason why Schulz's work transcends what we perceive to be unbreakable boundaries -- race, class, and language. Reaching 355 million readers worldwide is a breathtaking, if not, unbelievable accomplishment. This book (the expanded edition in paperback) is well worth the buy. I bought the original hardcover copy, but the expanded edition includes a few more gems from the Schulz family vaults and the asking price is, of course, more incentive to lay your money down. While this is not a collection of comic strips proper, that is, strictly page after page of strips for the collector, it provides a most fascinating glimpse to the early days of the strip and the development of characters with whom we identify and whom we adore. Granted, there was a lot to put in this book. so many of the early strips are reduced in size and "horded" onto a single page, but it's worth the sacrifice to "squint" and take a peek at them. Many of these have not been reproduced and have not been seen in years. The book is a unique glimpse into the work of a man who simply wanted to be remembered for creating great cartoons and pleasing people. It's nice to know that whenever life "get rough", we can retreat to Peanuts and laugh at ourselves. If you love Peanuts or want to pass on Schulz's legacy to others who are interested, buy this book, even though it's not a comprehensive collection or laid out the way a normal collection of strips would be. Consider this book a enjoyable "warm-up" for a major event -- the release of the ENTIRE Peanuts collection, complete and in chronological order starting April, 2004, from Fantagraphics Books. Pay them a visit on the web or search Amazon for The Complete Peanuts for more information. This is Peanuts lover's dream come true.

Peanuts Masterpiece:
Now, _this_ is the best collection you can get! Going through vast archives - including Charles M. Schulz's collection of _original_ strips, and newspaper clippings of the 1950s and beyond, as well as comic books of the 1960s, memorabilia like board games, records, bobbing-head toys (made by the Lego company before they made Lego!), and more, this is truly superb. And, the strips are presented in a unique form - instead of just reprints, we see photographs - detailed, high-quality, crystal clear photographs - of the originals, providing us with a massive increase in clarity - plus, with the newspaper clippings, we see those old dot-colored versions of the Sunday strips, and rarities - like what a strip looked like before Schulz adjusted the art for the published version, and a 1954 Sunday strip of Lucy and Charlie Brown at an ADULTS' golf tournament!! (The effect - that we only see them from about waist-down - is like how we saw Nanny in "Muppet Babies" -remember that?). We alo see Schulz' studio tools, left as they were after he finished the last strips in December 1999, and features like this - and the concluding pages - add a poignancy to the book. But it all works. There's no disappointments here!

A Beautiful and Moving Compilation:
If you are or were a fan of good old Charlie Brown, I highly recommend this beautiful and moving compilation of Schulz's work. More than 500 strips are reproduced, from his last penstrokes to his pre-Peanuts work. There are also modest quotes from Schulz throughout, as well as some interesting photos of his working space. As I re-read some of the earlier strips, I could vividly recall reading them as a kid. Something indelible in the seemingly simple lines of Schulz's drawing. Its interesting and somehow affecting to trace the development of the characters, to see Lucy as an innocent baby, and then follow her into domineering fussbudgetness. And Charlie Brown grew as well, losing some of his original pumkinheadedness over the years, but also losing some of his spunk and mischievious sense of humor. You can get the sense of the strip maturing, as in the earlier strips the characters were innocent, even in their anxieties, where later they became more knowing and resigned to their lot in life. Even though the strip changed over time, it had a timeless quality. There is evidence of a world outside of Schulz's palette, as in his few strips dealing with Viet Nam. But as with his drafting p.o.v., social issues are drawn from a child's perspective, a son's anxiety over his dad's absence, the fear of being sent off to somewhere strange in the future. There is no grand moralizing or strident argument, only a small, worried child. 50 years at the board, a worthy and dignified labor of love.