My Life in Books: Charles Schulz
With a few exceptions that I'll touch on later in this series, I don't particularly remember what I read as a little kid. This is unsurprising as my mother says I was reading when I was four, and I can't remember much of anything else from back then either. My personal library is no help in this regard. The books I have that date from my childhood are mostly from junior high and later, with one or two at most from elementary school. The major exception chronology is a whole pile of books that I read over and over again starting when I was in elementary school. I found Peanuts early on and pretty much never put it down until Charles Schulz passed away.
My father loved Peanuts when he was growing up, and I inherited that love along with a large pile of his old Peanuts paperbacks from the 1950s and 1960s. Most of these were perfectly sized to fit on the built-in shelf that circled the room that served as our home office. Over the years I (or more probably my mother) added on to that collection with an assortment of library discards, bag sale finds and other free or cheap acquisitions. When my parents divested themselves of their possessions before moving out of my childhood home in 2018, I received a large paper bag filled to the brim with dozens of Peanuts books.
I read those books over and over as a kid of all ages, from when I was little until I graduated from high school and again when I visited home. My favorite character when I was little was Snoopy, of course, but I also had deep and abiding affection for pretty much everyone else in the cast. Charlie Brown was even worse at baseball than I was, which was something of an accomplishment. Nowadays I'm more inclined toward Charlie Brown or Schroeder as my favorite character, but really you can't go wrong.
Our household love of Peanuts extended beyond the books. My father owns the original cast album of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and it's the first musical I remember ever listening to. To this day, I can probably recite the lyrics to most of the songs from that show. My father had seen that show back in the day when it was off-Broadway. He also owned a copy of The Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, which is actually the only 45 I remember my father having in his collection.
It is certainly my intent to push Peanuts on Birdie when she's old enough. This is first and foremost because Peanuts is fantastic and timeless, and secondly because it's a heck of a gateway to all sorts of other, more complicated, comics. This obviously assumes that these books manage to hold together through a third generation of childhoods, but if they don't, it may give me the excuse I've long been seeking to buy The Complete Peanuts.
My father loved Peanuts when he was growing up, and I inherited that love along with a large pile of his old Peanuts paperbacks from the 1950s and 1960s. Most of these were perfectly sized to fit on the built-in shelf that circled the room that served as our home office. Over the years I (or more probably my mother) added on to that collection with an assortment of library discards, bag sale finds and other free or cheap acquisitions. When my parents divested themselves of their possessions before moving out of my childhood home in 2018, I received a large paper bag filled to the brim with dozens of Peanuts books.
I read those books over and over as a kid of all ages, from when I was little until I graduated from high school and again when I visited home. My favorite character when I was little was Snoopy, of course, but I also had deep and abiding affection for pretty much everyone else in the cast. Charlie Brown was even worse at baseball than I was, which was something of an accomplishment. Nowadays I'm more inclined toward Charlie Brown or Schroeder as my favorite character, but really you can't go wrong.
Our household love of Peanuts extended beyond the books. My father owns the original cast album of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and it's the first musical I remember ever listening to. To this day, I can probably recite the lyrics to most of the songs from that show. My father had seen that show back in the day when it was off-Broadway. He also owned a copy of The Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, which is actually the only 45 I remember my father having in his collection.
It is certainly my intent to push Peanuts on Birdie when she's old enough. This is first and foremost because Peanuts is fantastic and timeless, and secondly because it's a heck of a gateway to all sorts of other, more complicated, comics. This obviously assumes that these books manage to hold together through a third generation of childhoods, but if they don't, it may give me the excuse I've long been seeking to buy The Complete Peanuts.