The complete Peanuts 1963 to 1964, de Charles M. Schulz.

The complete Peanuts 1963-1964 starts with Lucy’s straight remark “See, what did I tell you? This year is no better than the last one.” Indeed, the gang will continue to face the same dilemmas that started to take their everlasting form in the previous years and will be perpetrated over the 50 years of Schulz' watchful strip. Beethoven’s birthday, the psychiatry booth, the Christmas school program, the baseball season, the Great Pumpkin, the fall of leaves during Autumn, Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, etc. This book features the incorporation of “Happiness is…” – famous trademark – to the Sunday strips, three new characters – the boy 5 and his sisters 3 and 4 whose father “disturbed by all the numbers being put on us these days” gives in by naming his offspring after figures –, Sally learns how to jump rope and gets her library card, Snoopy makes friends with the bunnies he’s provoked to chase by Frieda, Charlie Brown can’t get his favorite baseball hero “Joe Shlabotnik” on a bubble gum card, Linus runs for school president. Charlie Brown hurts his arm and Snoopy gets his first rabbies shot. Two of the best sequences are related to Lucy’s treatment of Charlie Brown’s troublesomeness, which she decides to “cure” by showing all his faults projected on a screen, and second, the whole gang entering Snoopy’s doghouse for a “real good cleaning” suggesting that his abode is way bigger than its woody exterior implies. Linus’ attempt to paint the whole “story of civilization” on its ceiling is a real blast.