The complete Peanuts 1999 to 2000

The publisher of the Complete Peanuts series scored a major publicity coup when it snagged President Obama to pen an introduction for the latest volume, but the book's genuine significance lies in the fact that it marks the conclusion of the landmark project reprinting the entire 50-year run of the much-loved newspaper strip (a bonus volume will collect Schulz's Peanuts drawings outside of the strip itself). These last strips are marked by the increased prominence of the strip's newest cast member, Linus' and Lucy's younger brother, Rerun, who learns the ropes of baseball under the tutelage of The Master, Charlie Brown, and takes up drawing underground comic books. Schulz's line had grown increasingly shaky in his final years, but while the casual assurance of earlier decades may be gone, the slightly wavering mien of the characters imparts a touching humanity to these twilight installments. All two-and-a-half-years of Peanuts' precursor, Schulz's late-1940s weekly gag feature, Li'l Folks, rounds out the volume, bringing Schulz's cartooning career full circle.--Flagg, Gordon Copyright 2016 Booklist