Does it help to know something about WWI fighter planes/ air battles? I never understood the Red Baron strips when I was a kid, and this story doesn't rock me either. I do, however, fully appreciate Snoopy's/ Schulz's imagination. Especially imagining the jump rope as barbed wire....

Thanks to Little Free Libraries for encouraging me to pick up books I never otherwise would have. I'll 'pay this forward' at my first opportunity. ( )

I thought this book was hilarious. I checked it out from the library thinking that it was a collection of Peanuts strips that pertained to the Red Baron, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was more or less a separate story unto itself. The book flap jokingly describes this as "Charles Schulz's first full-length novel." It isn't, of course: it's just a picture book. Still, it's one of the funniest picture books I've ever seen. The humor is less slapstick than I expected; rather, the book is funny because of the changes in voice (as Snoopy sometimes refers to "The World War One Flying Ace" in the third person and sometimes in the first), and because the perspective shifts from dramatic danger in Snoopy's mind to ridiculous antics as witnessed by the neighborhood children. This book is well worth the read. I recommend it to anyone, regardless of age. In fact, adults will probably enjoy it very much, particularly since some humor will go over children's heads. Please don't pass this book up. It may be the imaginative fantasy alter ego for a neurotic dog, but the quirky style is delightful and vastly entertaining. ( )

Rather than being a collection of strips pertaining to the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron gag this a full length story. Yes, it is a picture book, but it still includes such wonderful words as "meander" and some minor French. Heck, it even goes on to describe the different fighter planes that are being flown and the tracer bullets being used. What's not fun about some minor WWI history?

The story is amusing, as Snoopy goes about his day imagining he's making his way through the fields of France. It's a charming little story, and one that I can't rightly imagine a little kid disliking. I loved the artwork, the vocabulary that didn't patronize the children, and the traditional Peanuts humor. It's a fine little book. :) ( )

Follow the battle of Snoopy and the Red Baron. As the Snoopy takes on the Red Baron first seen in "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown." ( )

I just re-read this, I think for the first time since the late 70s, when I borrowed it from a library..

It's adapted from the Peanuts newspaper comic of the time, a simplification of the long sequence of strips, which continued intermittently over many years (most of them after this book was published), in which Snoopy fantasises that he is a World War I flying ace, occasionally integrating the other Peanuts characters into his fantasy.

Snoopy's fantasies, including these Red Baron fantasies, reveal more than any other strips Schulz's greatness not only as an artist, but as a writer. In these strips and others like them he emulates the stories and style of various genres. The economy of words forced by the limited space of the newspaper comic panel, led him to a kind of prose poem perfectness, with not a word too many or too few.

As has been observed elsewhere, Snoopy and the Red Baron is the quintessential war novel, incorporating in its few hundred words (are there even that many?) all the major plot, characters and 'colour' to be found in many a long-winded epic. All the while it plays subtle games with narrative, smoothly segueing from the literal -- Snoopy on his doghouse, fantasising -- to Snoopy's point-of-view as he imagines journeying across a desolate World War I France of barbed wire and ruined farmhouses. Constantly we are reminded that this is a fantasy, or perhaps a story Snoopy is telling us about himself. At least once he breaks the fourth wall to directly address us as if he is aware he is telling us this story.

But when I look back on it, even just minutes after putting it down, what story do I remember most vividly? An anthropomorphic dog having a fantasy? A World War I flying ace shot down behind enemy lines? Although the fantasy is only presented literally for a short time, that aspect of the story seems to linger more potently in the memory, perhaps saying something about how ready we are -- or I am -- to grasp an attractive fantasy. ( )