Growing up in Israel, I had to endure children who only knew who Snoopy was. Nobody here knows of Linus’s blanket, Lucy’s mean spirit or Violet’s vanity. No one here knows anything more about this wonderful comic-world than Snoopy’s dance steps. They don’t know of the ice that nearly crushed his house [he was lured out with a pizza] and they don’t know that he has a Van Gogh in his doghouse and they surely don’t know that he fell in love with a girl beagle with long ears but that her father didn’t let them marry because he’s an “obedience-school dropout.”
Why do I know these things? In a generation where Peanuts was still in the Sunday comics for a few years but no more than that? Well, I know because I still have all my mom’s, dad’s and aunt’s Peanut books. They all cost ninety-nine cents back then, it says so right on the cover. I’m super careful with all these books because I love them, I adore them, I know half the comics in them by heart. At least half. I know of the dandelions on Charlie Brown’s pitcher’s mound, I know of Linus’s crush for his teacher – which was weird because at first he just found her odd and kept telling about the changes she wanted in her salary. I know about the Great Pumpkin and how Linus ruined his chances at being school president because he told everyone how on Halloween night the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch.
Can you tell that I have a bit of an obsessive love for the Peanutes gang?
Slightly Ignorant 
Lol we LOVE peanuts!!!
I just love Peanuts and Charlie Brown. It’s such a shame that some kids don’t ever know them. Don’t you love the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?? They sell them in stores and my granddaughter wants one for her room so I’m going to try and get that for her tomorrow.
I still vividly remember the Peanuts specials as they would air on CBS when I was a little boy. I remember the intro bumper CBS used going into the show. I think the one that sticks with me most is the program whre Snoopy runs away to find his original owner, and she lives in a place where they don’t allow dogs. As a child I recall feeling heartbroken while watching it.
As for books of this nature, I have several Bloom County books, which I pull out every so often and read through for the umpteenth time–but I enjoy them so, just as you do the Peanuts books.
I had no idea there was so much censorship of comics. Your description of things removed seems shocking to me. Although if we can’t get the US back on the right track we too may lose something as precious as the First Amendment and see our Sunday funnies sanitized for ‘proper’ reading.
Oh, no no no! Those things weren’t removed – just no one here knows about the real Peanuts antics, all they know and care about is Snoopy because he’s on the covers of school diaries and notebooks and stuff. He’s become a Disney-ish icon, and nothing more.