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Peanuts Museum: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz

Sparky said he would end Peanuts when he finally in the drawing board he used for 50 years. Sadly, that day never came.
That famous piece of hardwood now resides in a re-creation of his working studio at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, which kicked off its yearlong fifth-anniversary celebration last August.

Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty, Woodstock and the smartest beagle ever, Snoopy, came to life on this table, born out of the mind of a shy, funny, man known since age two as “Sparky.”

Schulz died at age 77 on Feb. 12, 2000, the day before the last original Peanuts appeared in Sunday newspapers. A fresh Peanuts had been in the funny pages every day since October 2, 1950, and those closest to Schulz believed he simply couldn’t bear to see it all end.

He was diagnosed with in November 1999 and announced his retirement a few weeks later.

Seven years later, Classic Peanuts still appears in 2,400 newspapers worldwide.

“We all continue to see ourselves in the strip, in how we connect to the world and how we relate to other people,” says museum director Karen Johnson. “And we see our own hopes, dreams, wishes and fears. Peanuts is decent and it’s funny and it’s whimsical and it’s , because it’s just about being human.”

The museum’s mission from the beginning has been to preserve, display and interpret Schulz’s artwork and to support cartooning in general. Since opening on August 17, 2002, a quarter-million visitors have gazed upon and pondered original Peanuts strips, and some of them spend a little extra time at Sparky’s studio, where his drawing board sits, retired.

Vocabulary Focus

kick off (phr. v) ---to start something

whimsical (adj) ---unusual and strange in a way that might be amusing

ponder (v) ---to think carefully about something, especially for a noticeable length of time

Specialized terms

comic strip (n. phr)--- 连环漫画 a short series of amusing drawings with a small amount of writing, usually published in a newspaper

funny pages (n. phr)--- 报纸的漫画版 newspaper space used specifically for comic strips