You've Got To Be You, Snoopy

Peanuts Coronet #47

by Charles M. Schulz

Fawcett catalog M2705

Genres: Comics, Humor, Comic Strips

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Charles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 47 of the Coronet run, this is a cracking collection taken from “You’ve Come A Long Way, Charlie Brown vol. 2”, which was published in 1976 (this is the 1977 edition) and features strips from 1970 and 1971. I hugely enjoyed this collection and my highlights include Snoopy’s speech at the Daisyhill Puppy Farm (and the aftermath), Snoopy the writer, boring bedtime books (so Charlie Brown nods off and Snoopy can watch TV), Miss Helen Sweetstory, Sally at school, Joe Cool!, Peppermint Patty asking Snoopy on a date, plenty of Shroeder & Lucy, “I won’t pull the ball away…”, The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown revealing he’s 8 and looking forward to being 21, until Linus points out that’ll be in 1984, enjoying the snow and several Snoopy & Lucy disagreements. I’d always thought it was the mid-late 70s strips I remember most but maybe I was wrong and it’s this era instead, with plenty of the gang, a lot of clever little jokes and not so much of Peppermint Patty. Full of humour, pathos and melancholy, this is everything a good Snoopy book should be and I would very highly recommend it.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Growing up, the morning was not complete if you didn’t read the Peanuts comic strip in the daily paper. When I stumbled across this collection of old comic strips, I realized that the Peanuts gang are something I rarely think about anymore and I wondered if they could still make me smile. Frankly, the comics weren’t as great as I remembered. These are not on the level of the television specials. But many of them still twisted the corners of my mouth up toward the ceiling.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a 1979 printing of this book. The strips were first syndicated in 1970 and 1971. This one is more embroidering on well established themes rather than providing sharp insights, but it’s still a joy to read time and again.

[Melissa Namba · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun book for kids who like Snoopy. There are allusions to Ouiji Boards in this book, so some parents will want to be cautious. Peppermint Patty goes on a date with Snoopy.