Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful tribute to Peanuts & Charle Schulz
Review: It would have been easy to just throw lots of Peanuts comic strips around and call it a book. Instead, Peanuts- A Golden Celebration chooses to truly pay tribute not only to the comic strip, but also to Charles Schulz. The book is bursting with the best and most memorable Peanuts strips ever produced. It showcases over 1,000 strips accompanied by heartfelt anticdotes from Schulz concerning certain strips, memories of seliing the strip, or just his outlook on life. While there are hundreds of Peanuts comic strip compilations, this book beats them all out, not just by sheer mass of strips but by how it is put together. It truly captures the magic that is Peanuts. If you're only going to buy one Peanuts book, or even just any compilation of any comic strip, this is the one to buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Peanuts deserves better, we deserve better
Review: This is a delightful book. The photos and information of Charles Schulz (allow me an aside:: I think that Charlie "BROWN" is a smokescreen: the main character of this strip is Charlie SCHULZ), his background, and his studio are wonderful for a lifelong fan (I'm a year younger than Linus). The commentary and selection are superb, and it's even fun to shake your head over some of the 'fan' mail he got. Allow me a sour note: the editing is sloppy. Strip #5 on page 15 appears again on page 16. The lower four strips on page 149 are out of order: they should go #6, #3, #5, #4. Good grief! Confused order on page 168 threatens to ruin the story line. #5 on page 168 belongs on page 170. Line 4 on page 171 appears again on page 236 (not that I minded seeing it again, but it means one less strip for us to enjoy.) You may think I've got too much time on my hands, to go through a comic collection so carefully, but come on! This *is* Peanuts, after all! What could matter more?
Rating:
Summary: A Great Sampling of 50 years worth of Cartoon Genius
Review: If you are a Peanuts fanatic, you already have this book. If you like the strip, and would like to have a comprehensive overview of the entire series, this book is perfect. It contains comic strips from 1950 to 1999, in chronological order. Of course, this is just a sampling, another company is releasing all the strips in order starting in April.
The book also contains a short biography of Schulz, a section on the TV shows and movies, & peanuts collectibles. If you have the 25th or 40th anniversary books, you've seen much of this information. Out of all the anniversary books, THIS one contains the most strips. ALSO, it contains brief commentary by Schulz in a sidebar for special strips (first appearance of a character, first football gag, etc.)
Highly recommended for vigorous or casual fans.
Rating:
Summary: I want MORE!
Review: IT's tough to rate this book because the strips are so good. But with anything that's gone on for so long, you have to wonder what was left out. I'll dock it a star for some rather strange compilation that gets strips out of order and leaves out huge chunks of strips in ongoing story lines. Additionally, Schulz's comments don't really illuminate the work behind the strip as much as one would hope. There also is no mention of the massive marketing of Peanuts products, and a section regarding letters Schulz has received is intriguing, but only covers a few pages. Suggestion...... A true history of Peanuts trivia, with comment on strips, favorite products, production notes for shows and movies, and other information that a lot of us would love to read. Still, buy it, or better yet, wait for the paperback, which will probably have the last strips in it.
Rating:
Summary: The story of a genius
Review: Charles M. Schulz was brilliant. If you don't agree with that statement, stop reading now, because there's no hope for you. The man could take the simplest forms -- a circle, two dots and some squiggly lines -- and create a character that exemplified the best of humanity, that made us cheer, made us laugh, broke our hearts and lifted our spirits. The reason everybody loves Charlie Brown is because everybody IS Charlie Brown. That said, this book is wonderful for people who want a sampling of the greatest Peanuts strips or, for people like myself, who want to know a little more about the man who created them and how the Peanuts came to be. This reads less like a simple comic strip collection and more like a historical archive. The great strips are there, to be certain, but the accompanying text helps to show the context in which they were written. The sampling also lets you see how Charlie Brown and the gang evolved from their embryonic "Lil' Folks" stage to the form we all fell in love with as we grew up. Anyone who likes "Peanuts" -- anyone with a heart, in other words -- will find something in this book for them.
Rating:
Summary: A Collector's Item Of The Highest Order!
Review: PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION is a remarkable celebration of one of two of the great achievements of American popular culture: the life of Charles Schulz and the quintessential comic strip of this or any generation. This magnificent volume is both a coffee-table book for the Peanuts fan and a skillfully-presented history of the Peanuts strip. Filled with entertaining examples of the Sunday and weekday strips, anyone who collects 20th century iconography, and any historian who will want to someday chronicle the feelings and foibles of the last five decades of the American people will want a copy of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful compilation for the casual Peanuts reader
Review: When first printed in 1999, this book offered the best retrospective on Schulz' Peanuts. It's still a wonderful book, which I own. If you're a casual fan of the strip, and don't mind if you haven't read all the panels, then you'll love this compilation. It serves as a perfect introduction to Schulz' comic. If you're a rabid, hardcore Peanuts fan like me, however, you might consider purchasing the complete Peanuts collection, which is available through Fantagraphics. (The first edition, printed in May, 2004, contains the first two years of Peanuts from 1950-1952. Several more volumes will volume over the next decade.) I've reviewed the first volume of that set, and plan on purchasing the others. The "Golden Celebration" should still be in every "Peanuts" collector's library and is the best edited compilation I've seen on Peanuts.
Rating:
Summary: Good . . . but not great
Review: Any "Peanuts" book is (for me, anyway) great, especially since there are a lot of strips I still haven't read, and this collection seemed good to begin with - but I don't think this is the best book on the market. It's like a greatest hits double-CD with new liner notes, remastered, and missing all the lesser hits and major album tracks which are your favorites.(And it's a little pricey - where I am, it's almost AU$100!) The drawbacks are, as others have noted, the editing is somewhat shoddy, some story arcs aren't completed, other really good story arcs aren't in here at all, a lot of the strips are in available books already (or at least those Fawcett paperbacks usually in libraries), and a lot of the commentary by Schulz is drawn from the 1985 book "You Don't Look 35, Charlie Brown!" (I wish that was in print.) - only the notes pertaining to 1990s strips are new. And the discussions of the TV specials, the musical, the movies are rather short - 2 pages for the 1999 version of the musical, and 2 for the movies _and_ the TV specials, when we're dealing with "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" and "Snoopy Come Home"!(Or rather, should be; neither are mentioned. Another out-of-print book, "Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown" [1979] goes into greater depth on a lot of TV specials, and the movies, and the making of "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown" [unreleased at that time], but is of course a little out of date [but still great].) Just a list of all the TV shows would have been nice - it's hard to keep track of all the "lesser" ones made in the mid-late 1980s/early 1990s - but evidently, that's too much to ask. Still, all the strips _are_ wonderful to read. It just, as a whole, doesn't quite reach the heights of 5-stardom - or, more appropriately, it isn't gold; perhaps bronze.
Rating:
Summary: The best collection of Snoopy
Review: I'm a snoopy fan, and I have this book in both English and Chinese editions. In my opinion, it's one of the best book on Snoopy. You can see how Snoopy grew up and changed by Charles' drawing. Most of all, when I am unhappy, I'd like to have this book with me, Idon't know why, but I'll feel better then. I'm not so good at English, but I wish you can understand me.
Rating:
Summary: The Genius Of Mr. Charles M. Schulz
Review: This is one of the best books that I have read from Mr. Schulz.
This book touched not only my heart, but also my soul. I am suffer from cancer. I can not truly express what this book and
other books by Mr. Shulz has done for my moral. I am a big Peanuts fan. My favorite character,and I do mean character is the
one and only,"The Flying Ace". God bless Mr. Schulz,and may you
rest in peace in His house forever.
|
