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Notations used in this guide:

* = There's a copy of this book in the AAUGH.com reference library.

(HB) = The copy in the reference library is a hardcover (may not be noted on books available solely in hardcover.)

CB = Charlie Brown

Copyright 1992-2005 Nat Gertler
All rights reserved.
This is a work-in-progress, and may contain errors or omissions. We accept no responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of this information.

The AAUGH blog:

Frequently Asked Questions about my Peanuts book list

Note: this is not intended to answer general questions about Peanuts and other matters, but merely specific questions regarding Peanuts books and this site.

Do you have all the books on this list? No, just the ones with the asterisk after them. While I have a lot of books, there are even books currently in print that I don't have. I put my effort into hunting down the out-of-print stuff, figuring that I can get the in-print stuff at any time. (Of course, I don't actually get around to getting the in-print stuff until it falls out of print!)

I have some Peanuts books. How much are they worth? This is the most frequent question I get. People want my list to be a price guide, and I don't believe in price guides, which by their nature reflect the prices that people would like to be able to sell their items for. The true value of a Peanuts book is the joy of the material within. The true financial value is whatever you can get for them... which probably isn't very much. Do not email me asking for a value for your books.

But the books I have are really old, judging by the copyright date. Aren't the collectors really going to want that? Actually, the earlier the copyright date is on the book, the more common it is, generally speaking. That's because there's been a lot of time to reprint the book over the years. For example, there are 28 books in the "full book" format. There were more than 20 years between the issuing of the first book and the last. That means that there were twenty extra years to keep reprinting the first volume, which went through literally dozens of printings. Meanwhile, the last full book may have only gone through one or two printings, and they probably weren't very big ones. (After all, if the series was selling well at that point, they probably wouldn't have ended it!) So most of the collectors I know have most of the early full books and Fawcett Crests, but they are often having trouble getting the later ones.

There are a few exceptions to this. If you have a first printing of one of the earliest books, there will be some collectors that are particularly interested in that. And there will likely be some interested in any printing of the very first book, entitled simply Peanuts. While this book was reprinted many times, the strips inside it were not re-collected in any of the other formats. For the fans interested in the history of the strip, these earliest examples are of particular interest.

Would you be willing to buy these books off me? If they're books I don't have, possibly... but only if they're priced at used book prices, rather than at Valuable Collectible prices. (And I do have a fair number of doubles which I can trade.)

Is there anything you're particularly looking for at this point? At this point, my biggest desires are to finish my collection of the French, Latin, and Spanish editions of Peanuts Philosophers books, and to get books in any foreign language that isn't already represented in my collection. Beyond that, basically, if I don't got it, I want it!

My copy of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz has Schulz's signature on the inside cover. Is it real? Nope. That signature was printed on all of the books, and has lead to some online booksellers listing the book as "signed", either out of ignorance or out of a desire to deceive. Schulz died in February, 2000, before work even began on that book, which wasn't published until October 2001. If you don't believe me, look at the inside back cover flap of the dust jacket, which states when Schulz died (if the dust jacket is missing, read the Introduction, where Schulz's wife speaks of him in the past tense). Schulz did not come back from the dead to autograph books.

Is this hardcover of Snoopy from 1958 really rare? 'Fraid not. Not only that, it's not really from 1958. During the 1970's, the Weekly Reader Book Club printed an abridged edition of Snoopy, and failed to put their own publication date. Instead, it bore the original publication date for the paperback, which was 1958. You can tell that the hardcover is not from the 1950s because it uses the white-border cover design that Peanuts books started using in the 1970's. This hardback is probably the book most commonly found in on-line auctions... almost always misdescribed as being a 1958 printing (and frequently misdescribed as "rare".)

Where can I buy Peanuts books on the web? We have a whole page to answer that question: click here

In what book can I find this particular favorite strip of mine? That's always a tricky one, and while I help people with it when I can, there are many times that I can't help. I am a busy person, however, so if you can take a few steps toward figuring out exactly when it appeared, that can help. As an example, someone asked me where he could find some strips from the late 1970's or the 1980's where Snoopy was a land surveyor. Well, that's a pretty long period of time. What I did was:

1. Pulled up the Peanuts FAQ that Derrick Bang maintains. The latest version can always be found on the alt.comics.peanuts newsgroup. This has the dates of the first appearances of all the characters, as well as listing the dates of the first appearances of all of Snoopy's roles (and many other dates).
2. Searched the list of roles for something that sounds like land surveying.. and there it was, "The World-Famous County Surveyor -- 6/18/79"
3. Pulled up my grid guide to primary Peanuts reprints to see which full books reprinted strips from 1979.
4. The main reprint for 1979 is a Peanuts Parade book called Here Comes the April Fool. At the time I did this hunt, I didn't have that Parade book, but I had a book that reprints that book, called You're Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Snoopy. I checked that book, and yes, the County Surveyor strips are in there! (This wasn't a sure thing, as not all strips get reprinted.)
5. I checked the grid again, and saw that the strips from that Parade book were currently being reprinted in two Peanuts Classics books, one also titled Here Comes the April Fool, and the other one called Nothing Echoes like an Empty Mailbox. I passed the information back to the man who asked that the strips would be in one of those two books.

There is one particularly handy resource, and that's a guy named Tim Chow. He's been building a database of Peanuts strips, which he can search if you need to find, for example, which strip mentions Bill Mauldin's characters Willie and Joe. He has about half of the strips to date entered, which means that there's a good chance he can specify the book that reprints any strip you have in mind. E-mail your inquires to him at tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu.

Why is this book I have not on your list? There's a number of possible reasons for this:

• I don't know about this book. This list is compiled from personal research; I'm sure I've not learned of every qualified book yet!
• It's a brand new book; sometimes it takes me a couple months to add a book to the list. Life is hectic.
• It doesn't qualify for the list. I'm not tracking everything that can be considered a "Peanuts book", yet. I've added a lot more categories of books than what I started with (which was just strip reprint books), but I'm still not tracking coloring or activity books, greeting card pamphlets, most foreign editions that I don't own, and various other categories that I consider less vital. Which is not to say that I won't add them at some point in the future.
• It is on the list. Often, I've found that people are just looking at the wrong place, or have missed the fact that I abbreviate "Charlie Brown" as "CB".

Why does the grid guide look like a mess of words running together? The problem is due to you using a browser that doesn't support tables. I try to make my pages as generally accessible as possible, but I'm afraid that a table browser really is needed for the grid.

Is there any way I can help with the list? Absolutely. There are some very simple things you can do to help:

• E-mail me and let me know how you found out about the list!
• As discussed earlier, let me know about any qualifying books I don't list.
• If you own any Weekly Reader hardbacks, let me know the title and the page count. (The page count will probably be 96, 100, 128, or 132.)
• Put a link to the list on your web site! You can either put a simple text link using this HTML:
  
  <A HREF="http://AAUGH.com/guide"> AAUGH.com's Peanuts book list</A>
  
  which will look like AAUGH.com's Peanuts book list, or you can add a graphic link using this HTML:
  
  <A HREF="http://AAUGH.com/guide"> <IMG SRC="http://AAUGH.com/guide/listad.gif" HEIGHT="40" WIDTH="400" BORDER="0" ALT="AAUGH.com's Peanuts book list"></A>
  
  which will add this to your web site:
  
  Don't just copy the graphic over to your site; by loading the graphic from my site, not only does it save you web space and makes life easier on your server, it also means that I can update the graphic from time to time.

So this is all just some lame attempt to make money off of poor trusting Peanuts fans? Ummm, no. Yes, I do make a small amount of money from AAUGH.com. Compared to the time I spend maintaining the list and catalog and answering the e-mail questions, I would be making a lot more flipping burgers. When I put the list up, it was with no source of income in sight or intended, and I would be maintaining the list even if there was no AAUGH.com catalog. If someone wants to complain that I do have the AAUGH.com catalog or that I occassionally plug the AAUGH.com catalog or even throw in links to the AAUGH.com catalog, well, that's their own problem.

Are you the Nat Gertler who was thanked at the end of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz? Yup. All I did was proofread and correct the text for the pages on the history of Peanuts comic book magazines.

Did you ever met Charles Schulz? No. I did see him speak once, when they were dedicating his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And I am involved in a cartoonists organization that he was a member of. I never did get introduced to him, and while it would've been a thrill for me if I were, it wasn't something I feel the need for. I have his work, which is what is important to me.