“That’s a lot of Snoopy!”
So said Alex, our ten-year-old, this past Saturday as he began his morning dive into the comics of our local newspaper.
Yes, we still receive a physical newspaper – and yes, some children do still read portions of it.
Alex was reacting to the Centennial Celebration of Peanuts comic strip creator Charles Schulz, who was born on November 26, 1922. In homage to the late, bespectacled cartoonist, many artists slyly slipped in references and illustrations related to Charlie Brown and the gang in their own strips.
When Schulz died of colon cancer back in 2000 at the age of 77, the introverted artist was hailed as someone who deftly captured the fun and foibles of life, and especially the frustrations and uniqueness of childhood. By design, no adults ever appeared in the comic strip. In television specials, several of which remain holiday classics, adult voices are represented by the drone of trombones. In fact, Schulz insisted on using real kids to voice the various children’s characters.
Charles Schulz insisted that nobody else would draw his strip after he died, a pledge his family has kept for the last twenty-two years. But so voluminous and productive was the artist for over a half-century that Peanuts continues to appear each and every day. | 
