It's a Dog's Life, Snoopy

While the title gives the impression that this Peanuts collection focuses soley on Snoopy, this is not the case. The book actually reprints all the Peanuts strips from the calendar year 1998 in chronological order, complete with the dates in the daily strips. This really is the best way to enjoy any comic strip because Shulz of course did have storylines that would run over the course of many days, if not a few weeks. The daily strips are actually in color as well as the Sundays although sometimes the colors seemed to have been rushed or off a bit from panel to panel. We see the usual Schulz plot elements here, Baseball games, preparing for the Great Pumpkin, Lucy flirting with Schroeder, Snoopy's writing career, etc...Rerun plays a fairly big part in this collection as he's developed and fleshed out quite a bit than he had been since his arrival and was Schulz's last major addition to the cast, even though he was not the most popular amongst Peanut's fans. There are a lot of hits, and a few misses; some rely on specific reactions to the outside world which I do not share. But then, some of the ones that other people would find to be non-sequitors, I find brilliant, because I can see what's going on in the character's head. All in all, quite an enjoyable book.

This wonderful book contains 168 pages of Peanuts cartoons, and all of them are in color! All of these 1998 cartoons are reproduced in wonderful quality, and are a joy to read. Snoopy's brothers (Spike, Olaf and Andy) are here, including Spike spending time in the trenches of World War I! Also, in this book, we get to learn where the zambonis go at night, see Snoopy at Valley Forge, and see Woodstock become a test pilot.This is a great book! My daughter had some money saved up, and when she saw this book, she just had to get it. After that, she spent hours poring over it, and reading the stories aloud. She loves this book, and considers her money well spent. We both highly recommend this book.

Hey, I like the color! I wish the rest of the critics of this particular format would be quiet! No, it may not have been in color when you saw it in the newspaper, but don't you think Charles Schulz would have liked to have added color to it? I think it looks great! Let's see more from Ballantine books!

This book is a good example of how good Charles M. Schulz's comic strip "Peanuts" was, even this late in it's run (1998). Some really good material appears in this book, including appearances by Snoopy as a revolutionary war soldier, Charlie Brown and Snoopy going to a dance where Snoopy imagines himself as F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, and more strips featuring the entire Peanuts gang. Rerun was also starting to shape up very nicely as a major Peanuts player in the mid-to-late 90's, as can be seen in this collection. Now if someone would stop coloring in the daily strips, (They're supposed to be in black and white! Why do you think all that dotted shading is in there?) and print the Sunday strips without reformatting the art and dropping a frame per strip, maybe future Peanuts books would get FIVE stars.

Once again Ballantine has put out a wonderful collection of previously unpublished Peanuts strips. The collection size is nice, a full year's worth of strips including all the Sunday strips, which other publishers have left out. And what can I say about Charles Schulz that hasn't been said already? He's the worlds greatest cartoonist and these strips stand as proof! Despite what some critics have said, "Sparky"(as he was known to his friends) never lost his cleverness, his last decade of work on the strip in my opinion is some of his best work ever! The only problem I have is in the book production itself, all the daily strips have been colorized which takes away from Sparky's line work and his wonderful use of zip-a-tone shading, the strips were meant to be in black and white and that's the way they should remain. One other small complaint is the Sunday strips set up, they are arranged in such a way that the second panal is left out of all the Sunday strips. Other then that this is a great book for Charles Schulz fans or anyone that enjoy a good strip! (no that pun was not intended but feel free to laugh anyway)