Some - - NO MORE illustrations from Charles M. Schulz's 'Two-By-Fours' (1965)
PLEASE NOTE: In accordance with a cease and desist message received from About Comics, current copyright holder for the images from Charles M. Schulz's 'Two-by-Fours' book, the color scans from a vintage copy of that book have been removed from this blog until further notice.
Thank you.
About Comics would also like you to know that their book 'Schulz's Youth' collects cartoons from both the 'Young Pillars' series and images from 'Two-by-Fours'.
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This little book of child psychology for churchgoing folk was a collaboration between beloved cartoonist
Charles M. Schulz and writer Kenneth F. Hall.
It first appeared in the
mid-1960s, right around the same time Schulz was finishing up his run on 'Young Pillars', a comic strip with similar gently religious overtones, focused on teenagers.
Schulz' 'Peanuts' gang were certainly already hugely popular at the time, though it would still be a couple of years or so before they'd take over the planet and all its media.
If the lanky, elongated teens in 'Young Pillars' looked sort of like older versions of Charlie Brown and his friends, the 'Two-By-Fours' kids look sort of like kids who were their same age but who lived across town or went to a different school.
- A bit of text from the book's back cover ▲ and preface ▼ defining the concept...
"When a Two-by-Four is a piece of lumber, you can stack it on a neat pile or cut it to just the right length and nail it to a wall.
"But, the kind of Two-by-Four we discuss here (children living in their second, third, and fourth years) you can never quite nail down so permanently or stack up so neatly.
"In fact, these youngsters do not themselves have a clear picture of just who they are, and they do a lot of groping to try to discover the answer."
Fun to see Schulz working in a single-panel format, as opposed to his customary strip motif.
The vivid colors are reminiscent of those in his book Happiness is a Warm Puppy, and bring back memories of greeting cards and calendars of the era, or 'gift' books printed around the same time by Price/Stern/Sloan and other such publishers.(click on any image to enlarge it in a new window)(click on any image to enlarge it in a new window)
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7 comments:
Interesting and funny! Thanks for posting it.
natewhilk a*t gmail d/o-t com
As a gigantic Peanuts fan, I'm constantly amazed at how much I don't know about the strip and Schulz's work.. I had no idea this work existed! Thanks so much for mentioning it.
I'd love to read a good biography of Schulz. The American Masters special on Schulz that appeared on PBS didn't do him justice, and I refuse to read the book that the Schulz family trashed a couple of years ago.
I had completely forgotten about the 2 by 4s...wonderful! Some years back, Reader's Digest had one of their 4 story condensed books out and had an excellent bio on Schulz. I can't recall the author. I suppose an email to RD would get a result.
RadioWizard
Many years ago in the early 70s, my Dad brought home from the library a HUGE book of Peanuts. It was plum full of every possible peanuts strip written at the time. (Probably not but it was HUGE) anyway, I spent many hours in bed at night just reading those strips. I was pretty young but I "got" it! Anyway, I remember a specific story line which I have NEVER been able to find since and I have searched...Lucy doesn't like Linus blanket and I think she wants to get rid of it or something and she finds her self alone with the blanket and it turns on her! It comes "alive" and lucy is now horrified by the blanket! It's my favorite peanuts story and I wish I could find the strips. Anyhow, LOVE the peanuts stuff!
Well...I am unsure if my comment was saved because an error thing came up. Anyway, I posted about my memory of Linus blanket having it out for Lucy and I had searched it to no avail. I did just find this concerning my memory:
"On one occasion in 1965, Linus' blanket took revenge on Lucy for her campaign against it by "jumping" her and physically attacking her. The attacks scared Lucy so badly that she was afraid to go home at night. Eventually she and the blanket made a "truce" whereby the blanket would refrain from attacking Lucy if she promised not to try to throw it into the trash burner anymore. Lucy did in fact try to throw the blanket into the trash burner a few years later (as part of a storyline in which Linus made a deal to give up his blanket if his grandmother would quit smoking, and Lucy rationalized that after two weeks without the blanket, Linus no longer needed it), but an unusually strong-willed Linus intervened at the last second, rescued his blanket from the trash burner and screamed at Lucy to mind her own business when it came to the blanket; he told her that if their mother wanted him to get rid of the blanket, then he'd do it; until then, it was no one else's business but his."
Well this sucks. I have the book 'Schulz's Youth' and find it that your site exposed the book in many ways without a direct reference. Till now. To take down the pics when the entire catalog of Peanuts is offered for free online. I guess About Comics should learn how to share. Shame on them. Many publishers would dream of free publicity in any form.
Why even give those guys a free plug?
This reminded me of a workbook I got from one of those Christian teen seminars that had illustrations by Jim Davis (the Garfield guy). I don't have it anymore, but I'll bet it's on the Internet somewhere!
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