Where Did You Go, Charlie Brown? is an inspiring book for PRE-K to 3

What immediately struck me about Where Did You Go, Charlie Brown? is that the author is listed at Charles Schulz on the cover.  This must be a book from the Peanuts vault because he died a while ago, I thought.   Once you open the book you see that this book was written by Diane Lindsey Reeves and Cheryl Shaw Barnes, while the illustrations were done by Tom Brannon.  This book has the soul of Peanuts with an educational story that small children can understand and has beautiful, art that looks exactly like the preview for the movie.

Yes, the preview for the Peanuts movie is outstanding.  One thing that really makes is stand out for us are the colors.  Charlie Brown and everyone stand out, while the background is sometimes clear, other times muted.   It looks like anime to an extent.  The gorgeous, hand painted backgrounds look like you can jump into them and help Snoopy fly in the Red Barron.

I would be surprised if there wasn’t a very tight relationship between the film and these new books.  If that’s the case then the film should be great because this book really surpassed our expectations.

The book starts out with Lucy opening up her classic psychiatric help booth for five cents.  Her advice is curt as usual and leaves everyone confused over what she meant.  Linus, ever the optimist speaks to everyone and says, “one person’s insult is another person’s inspiration, let’s turn her advice into adventures”.

This leads everyone to learn about Gertrude Ederly, the first woman to swim the English Channel, Amelia Earhart, Lewis and Clark and other famous trailblazers.

 

The ‘story’ part of the book manages to tell the story of these people, in addition to how the Peanuts gang learns about them in a succinct way that makes this a great good night book.  It’s a good book any way you look at it, but its length, big words and very big illustrations make it great for good night.  You can read this twice easily in 12 minutes, even taking time to talk with your children about the people.

At the end of the book there are full pages devoted to the explorers and trailblazers that were mentioned in the book. Those pages are slightly more advanced, have bigger vocabulary and are good for older readers or for parents to read.