Charlie Brown Christmas

'Tis the season to be jolly, but Charlie Brown is feeling blue. Setting off in search of a prop for the big holiday pageant, our hapless hero finds a bedraggled tree…and the real meaning of Christmas. Winner of Emmy and Peabody awards.

Children's Literature

Rather than using a book to generate a movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas puts the dialogue of a television special right on the printed page along with all of our favorite Peanuts characters. The story is familiar and worthy of repeating season after season. Charlie Brown is dejected by all the "greedy buying and selling that had become Christmas" but is unable to pull together his friends for a peaceful and successful performance of their holiday play. His efforts to bring just the right Christmas tree to the stage leave him even more dejected when the one tiny tree he finds falls to the ground with the weight of a single ornament. "Everything I touch gets ruined!" he moans. But spurred by the sweet innocence of Linus, the others decorate the little tree until it becomes a beautiful centerpiece for the season. Each Peanuts character in the story provides a "teachable moment"¾Charlie Brown's idealism, Sally's youthful selfishness, Lucy's arrogance, Linus' thoughtful caring. It is a story of simplicity, sincerity and friendship that reminds readers of the essence of the Christmas holiday with humor and page after page of well-loved artwork. 2001, Little Simon, $5.99. Ages 4 up. Reviewer: Karen Leggett

Charles Monroe Schulz (1922 -2000) was a 20th-century American cartoonist best known for his Peanuts comic strip. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Dena and Carl Schulz. His nickname "Sparky" was given by his uncle, after the horse Spark Plug in the Barney Google comic strip. He attended St. Paul's Richard Gordon Elementary School, where he skipped two half-grades. As a result, he was the youngest in his class when he attended St. Paul Central High years later, which may have been the reason why he was so shy and isolated as a young teenager. After his mother died in February, 1943, he was drafted into the army and sent to Camp Campbell in Kentucky. He was then shipped to Europe two years later to fight in World War II. After leaving the United States Army in 1945, he took a job as an art teacher at Art Instruction Inc., which he attended before he was drafted. First published by Robert Ripley in his Ripley's Believe It or Not!, then in a series of chronicles, The Saturday Evening Post, his first regular comic strip, Li'l Folks was published in 1947 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. (It was in this strip that Charlie Brown first appeared, as well as a dog that looked much like Snoopy). In 1950 he approached the United Features Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. This 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 abandoned that strip due to the demands of the success of Peanuts.