It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown timeless board book excellence

To borrow from another classic, seasonal story, you’d really have to be a Grinch not to like Peanuts, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Yeah, there are umpteen Peanuts books out there for children and if they figured out a way to harvest the hair off of Charlie Brown’s bald head then people would probably still buy it. Just a quick glance at the other Halloween books available from Linus and the gang reveals, The Great Pumpkin Returns, Countdown to Halloween, and Happy Halloween, Charlie Brown!. So, with all of those books in the Peanut-sphere, what could possibly make It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown worth getting?

First off, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a massive, oversized board book. While I don’t recall all of the dialogue from the television special, this board book has everything that I remember watching it when I was a lad. This board book will take approximately eight minutes to read to young audiences if they do so at a normal reading pace, and slightly longer if you take extra care with the voices or tone.

Secondly, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Have you read it lately or seen the special in recent memory? Every reader or viewer wants to will the Great Pumpkin into existence, if nothing else just to prove Linus correct. His irrepressible spirit of sincere, earnest hopefulness is a characteristic that we could all use more of. Is it naïve? According to some, it might be, but consider the age that the story is built for, and then ask yourself that question again.

Do you, the adult or mature reader who is telling the story want to squash or water down the hopes of an early elementary school student? The inflexible realities of life will come at them soon enough. Those four through eight-year-old kids need to ruthlessly hold onto their sillies for as long as possible. Before they know it they’ll have a cell phone and glibly answer your questions without looking you in the face. Their best friend will be some moronic YouTuber that they’ll say that they won $1,000 from or are flying out to star in their next video with. For now, let those kindergarten through third graders be as innocent and pure in their beliefs as Linus is in his eternal hope that the Great Pumpkin is going to fly through the night sky on Halloween delivering presents.

It’s a delicious misunderstanding of Santa Claus and Halloween, with just a dash of Nightmare Before Christmas blended in for good measure. This board book of Peanuts It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a treasure edition, replete with the classic, or obligatory this book belongs to, page as you first open it. That’s because, as hokey as it sounds, this is one of those books that will (or should) remain in your forever library. Your young children will love it. They’ll have fond memories of the book being read to them dozens upon dozens of times by their loved ones. When they’re older and have children of their own they’ll break the book out to their pre-k child and they’ll enjoy it just as much as they did decades earlier.

Peanuts It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is by Charles M. Schultz and is available on Simon Spotlight, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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