Other editions of book Charles Schulz

Charles Schulz knew that he had been born to draw comic strips. "My ambition from earliest memory," he said, "was to produce a daily comic strip... My earliest recollection of drawing and getting credit for it is from kindergarten. The teacher gave us huge sheets of white paper and large black crayons. I drew a man shoveling snow, and she came around, paused, looked at my picture, and said, ‘Someday, Charles, you are going to be an artist.’" From these humble beginnings, Charles Schulz developed a love of comics and a strong desire to draw cartoons. His only training in art came from a correspondence course he took shortly before World War II. When he was 28, in 1950, United Feature Syndicate picked up his comic strip with Charlie Brown and decided the strip would be called "Peanuts." Seven newspapers carried that first cartoon and Schulz was paid $90 for it. Over the next fifty-plus years, Charlie Brown and Snoopy became icons in the comic world. And when their author died on February 12, 2000, millions of fans mourned. Here is the story of a man nicknamed "Sparky" and the lovable characters he created.