Will I love Schulz and Peanuts?

Charlie Brown, Lucy, and “the gang” have fascinated me since I sat at the family table, fighting with my siblings for sections of the newspaper. My copy of this book is copiously highlighted because there was so much to learn about the artist’s life and technique. The opening pages reeled me in when the writer told of Schulz witnessing his mother’s excruciatingly painful death from cancer. I know cartoons have wisdom that goes beyond kids’ comprehension. This book shows how and why Schulz used all the elements of his life to write this strip. Peanuts and the comics of my… show more.

I truly can’t imagine what my life would have been like with Peanuts, so it was no surprise to learn that the man who created it was a complex, flawed person—just like all of us. For me, Peanuts was the gateway not just to comics and independent kids whose parents never seemed to be around, but to jazz through the TV shows. This is also a model biography, and a pleasure to read on that count.