Rating: 
Summary: A gorgeous look at wonderful material
Review: If you're a fan of Peanuts strips, you want this book. It is gorgeous. This is visually the most amazing Peanuts book every produced. Yes, it's that good. Most of the book is made of Peanuts strips, but not just printed from old stats as most strip books are. Instead, the strips are photographed, either directly from the original art (which gives very sharp reproduction while showing you the little physicalities that go into the making of the strip) or from printed newspapers. The latter may *sound* a bit tacky, but really it gives the book a very textural sensibility. Eisner Award-winning designer Chip Kidd knows what he is doing. Also in it are plenty of Schulz sketches, pictures of Peanuts products and packaging, Schulz notes and correspondence, and more. This is a good coffee-table book, but it isn't large like your typical coffee-table tome. It's about the size of a standard hardcover book, turned sideways. It's thick, over an inch thick, which helps it include over 500 strips, including many never before reprinted in a U.S. Peaunts book. Text is scattered throughout the book, including Schulz quotes and descriptions of pictured items. However, it's a book that encourages one to flip through it; it does not need to be read linearly.
Rating:
Summary: Peanuts Par Excellence
Review: Initially, I would say we don't need one more book on the already exhausted topic of Charlie Brown and Charles Schultz...but you haven't seen this book yet. Chip Kidd has an obvious and endearing love for the art of comics. Already evidenced by his exemplary work on Batman Collected and the recently published Plastic Man history, Kidd once again brings his original vision and design to the art of Charles Schultz. Shooting from yellowed original strips from newspapers and closeups of original art with paste-up corrections...it's brilliant. A good portion of the book deals with Schultz original art from the 50's when his Peanuts characters exhibited a naive and endearing simplicity. That alone is worth the price of the book. It surpasses the idea of just another tribute to Peanuts and its creator. We get to see the creative process that Schultz went through in the creation of his strips through the use of small sketches and doodles and clips from past interviews. Just thumb through this book and you'll have to buy it and don't miss the great photo of the closeup of Schultz's favorite dip pen...caked and encrusted with ink. Beautiful!
Rating:
Summary: Peanuts Masterpiece
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: He became self derivative
Review: OK, I am going to take the unpopular stance and throw a little cold water on the hype. I was first introduced to Peanuts at the tender age of 8-9 and was hooked. Now this was in the early 60's, Peanuts was well established and gaining steam. Schulz had not yet sold out to prefab pastry Dolly Madison, and railed against the Big Eastern syndicate who monopolized and commercialized Christmas, then dove in head first to feed the same fire him self. As a child and up to my mid teens I enjoyed Schulz's easy, laid back simpler times almost nostalgic view on the world. Sitting in my room under my Snoopy Cowabunga poster, in my Snoopy T-shirt, reading my Charlie Brown books. Then it seemed to get preachy, anti-anti establishment, naive, and finally redundant. I started seeing old jokes reworked, self derivative plot lines drawn out with no resolution, and sometimes several strips sans punchline. Or a punch line that scooted above or below my radar. Now I thank Mr. Schulz for the enlightenment given, the exposure to classic literature and great music. But he dried up in the late 70's and should have sat back and collected his Met Life and Dolly Madison Residuals. Knowing when to quit is key. And as great as he had been, he died long before his body did. This work reviews a great strip and maybe unintentionally also plots its downfall...
Rating:
Summary: A Must For Any Dedicated Peanuts or Charles Schulz Fan
Review: Quite simply, this is an essential piece in any dedicated Peanuts or Charles Schulz fan's collection as it details the origins of one of the world's most endeared cartoons and the cartoonist behind it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent rare material, but could have been even better
Review: Sadly, much early Peanuts work from the 1950s has never been collected, and possibly never will be. (Bloom County has the same problem.) This book goes some way to correcting that oversight, as many dozens of early strips are reprinted, camera-shot from newspaper copies preserved for decades. The lively evolution of the strip from its earliest days to its heyday in the 1960s are captured for the reader's fascination, along with some of Charles Schultz' pre-Peanuts work. The book is not truly a collection of strips, though; it's a consideration of Schultz' body of work, with historical notes and stylistic analysis, as well as sidebars regarding the animated shows and various rare paraphernalia produced in conjunction with the strip (photos of statues of the characters are particularly striking). Insightful quotes by Schultz regarding his work and his characters are also presented. It's an educational reference, in that way, much as Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary Special or Dan Piraro's Bizarro collection, Life is Strange and So Are You, are. The book could have been even better, though. It has a fancy sense of graphic design which seems starkly at odds with Schultz's straightforward linework. This includes reproductions of some strips in either very small or very large formats, both of which work against the strips' charm. The failure of the book to pick a format and stick with it is lamentable, and tends to hide the commentary making it difficult at timesto follow the narrative. Schultz's material transcends the format's limitations, though, and any Peanuts fan should delight at the surprises waiting for them in the strip's earliest years, such as the evolution of some of the characters, and the peculiar (to our eye today) foibles that they exhibited in the beginning. The reproduction quality is by-and-large very high (even the small versions of the strips are readable), and the choice of material includes some of my favorite strips. The latter days of the strip (1980-2000) are given only a brief look, which is good since it was clearly on its downside by that point (besides the declining choice of subject matter - I never warmed to either Peppermint Patty or Spike as major characters - Schultz's draftsmanship suffered somewhat as a result of his stroke). Despite its flaws, this book is an essential and unique piece of Americana. With any luck, it will sell well enough that a comprehensive reprint of Peanuts from its inception will commence in the near future. Hey, we can dream, can't we?
Rating:
Summary: absolute MUST HAVE for the Schulz fan!!
Review: The world lost a close, personal friend when Mr. Schulz passed away. Fortunately for those of us who are fans of his work, fine books like this remain as a tribute and history of his work. In "Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz", readers are given a short biography of Mr. Schulz and now he found himself falling into the role of an artist (turns out he first started seriously drawing in the army!). Over time, he began drawing a strip called "Lil' Folk" that bears strong resemblance to the modern Peanuts gang. The thing that set Lil' Folk aside from other strips at the time was that the children Schulz drew were not only funny and stylized (a kid with a particularly round head who would later evolve into Charlie Brown caught the heart of readers), but because the kids themselves would say precocious things beyond their years. In this collection, a very large section is devoted to Lil' Folks and the very early Peanuts cartoons. You can easily see how certain characters began and how they evolved into the characters we've seen over the years in Christmas specials, advertising for Met Life and Millbrook bread, and waiting for the Great Pumpkin. The book itself is about 90% comic strips arranged on the page in order of their publication, so comic strip fans can take in a whole month's worth of strips in a few pages. The work is exhaustive of Schulz's early works and hundreds of strips that have never been released in any other anthology/collection of Schulz's work are found here. The only drawback is that the book itself is narrow, so many of the strips come out being rather small-smaller than they'd normally look in a newspaper. While you don't need to read the book with a magnifying glass, you may find yourself squinting at certain older strips that haven't survived the test of time or that came off the printer slightly fuzzy. Frankly, I think the publisher should have insisted on a larger, coffee table-sized book where the strips could be seen more easily. Still, for anyone who is a fan of Peanuts, this is a MUST HAVE! For the biography and early sketchbook illustrations by Mr. S., for it's heretofore unpublished strips, and as a testimony to a kind, brilliant and dedicated illustrator, this book comes highly recommended by this Peanuts aficionado.
Rating:
Summary: Big, Bright, and Bountiful
Review: This book is a luxurious trip through the world of Peanuts. The large blowups of panels and characters send the work into true art and cement home Sparky's place in Popular Culture. The graphic design and layouts are wonderful and engaging and give me that warm feeling I have always received from Charlie Brown and Co. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: A Personal Look Into Sparky's Archives
Review: This book is quintessential to all Peanuts fans and collectors. If you liked Peanuts: A Golden Celebration, you're guaranteed to enjoy Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz. Chip Kidd has done an excellent job with the design of this book (with original clippings of comic strips) and there's a nice introduction by Schulz's widow, Jean Schulz who calls her late husband the genius that he was! Like many others who pointed this out, I was impressed by the amount of early Peanuts cartoons featuring Charlie Brown (sometimes without his famous jagged striped shirt), Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus as babies (Lucy's eyes were larger and she was a much sweeter girl than what she became). Snoopy walked on all fours, except when he was dancing (he had yet to introduce his many other alter egos, like the World War I Flying Ace and Joe Cool). And does anybody remember Shermy (Charlie Brown's original buddy), Violet, and Patty (no, not Peppermint Patty who would debut in 1966)? At first Violet and Patty were friends to Charlie Brown, but they later became Lucy's Greek Chorus for insults. Interesting moments include Charlie Brown getting Schroeder interested in playing the piano (hence, a musical genius is born), a minor character named Charlotte Braun (who looked a little like Frieda and acted a lot like Lucy later would), and a rare cartoon featuring adults in the background. The book also includes one mistake of Charlie Brown being left with one eye in one cartoon and lists the original 8 newspapers that carried Peanuts (not everybody got to enjoy Peanuts at 1st). You also get a few Little Folks cartoons (which Schulz, then known as Sparky, worked on before Peanuts) and an excerpt from a comic book not even drawn by Schulz. There's a drawing of what the little red haired girl (Charlie Brown's wouldbe girlfriend) may have looked like in Peanuts! She didn't look at all like the little red haired girl in It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (a 1977 TV special). Rare toys, figurines, and board games of the Peanuts gang are displayed. And finally, this book features excerpts and original sketches from I Need All the Friends I Can Get. Special thanks to Chip Kidd for doing a great job compiling this gem and to my sister for getting me this for Christmas!
Rating:
Summary: Emphasis on Art!
Review: This is a beautiful book meant as a visual celebration of Schulz's work. The construction and feel of this "almost" coffee table book invites casual browsing for the casually interested, as well as deeply satisfying reading for the Peanuts fanatic. I poured through this in the first hours that it was in my hands, and find myself turning again and again to the beautiful photographs and layouts. You never looked so good Charlie Brown.
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