What do you think?
Rate this book
Tenavat #3
Snoopy and the Red Baron
Snoopy and the Red Baron is Charles Schulz's first full-length novel. In the tradition of the great war novels, it is an odyssey of love, guts, and tears; its larger-than-life protagonist-Ace Pilot Snoopy.
Among the unforgettable Vignettes of Snoopy at War ...
Snoopy ... awakened from a sleepless night to fly yet another mission ... Snoopy ... departing at dawn in his Sopwith Camel to face the butcher of the skies-the Red Baron ... Snoopy ... high above France, attacked by anti-aircraft ... Snoopy ... smiling coldly in the shadow of a familar Fokker Triplane ... Snoopy ... piercing the skies with his defiancry, "Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah, Red Baron!" ... Snoopy ... bidding a pain-filled farewell to one he will long remember ... Snoopy ... on knees and belly,
fighting back through enemy lines ...
Read Snoopy and the Red Baron . This is the war novelist's war novel.
Among the unforgettable Vignettes of Snoopy at War ...
Snoopy ... awakened from a sleepless night to fly yet another mission ... Snoopy ... departing at dawn in his Sopwith Camel to face the butcher of the skies-the Red Baron ... Snoopy ... high above France, attacked by anti-aircraft ... Snoopy ... smiling coldly in the shadow of a familar Fokker Triplane ... Snoopy ... piercing the skies with his defiancry, "Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah, Red Baron!" ... Snoopy ... bidding a pain-filled farewell to one he will long remember ... Snoopy ... on knees and belly,
fighting back through enemy lines ...
Read Snoopy and the Red Baron . This is the war novelist's war novel.
62 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 1966
8 people are currently reading
256 people want to read
About the author
Charles M. Schulz
3,024 books1,624 followersCharles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
September 20, 2022
As far back as I can remember, I always thought of Snoopy and the Red Baron whenever I saw Charlie Brown on TV or in the comics. One of my favorite toys as a kid was a bright yellow Sopwith Camel with a Snoopy dog in the copit. You could give the prop a flick with your finger as you yelled, "Contact!" and the battery would keep it spinning until you landed safely at your airdrome or were shot down. There was just something magical that stimulated my imagination whenever I pretended that brave little dog was dogfighting with the Baron in the skies over no-man's-land. Funny thing though, the only part of the Red Baron that was ever portrayed was his bullets ventilating our hero's biplane. Of course, even as a kid I knew what a Red Fokker triplane looked like. Heck, my very first album was the group The Royal Guardsman playing all three of the Snoopy songs on it along with a make believe wartime radio commentary. So when I saw this book at a garage sale, I just had to have it.
Of course it is an easy read for me and at my age, and I should surely hope so! But maybe I can share that book with one of my great-grandkids someday. It is cute, easy to read, and well illustrated. World War I is now in the distant past for kids today, so some will not get it as I did. Of course with all the video games now, who knows? Although you won't see me reading it at work during my lunch break, it sure gave me some happy memories as I paged through it.
I am giving it 4 stars for two reasons. One, it was important to me. The other reason is to honor those brave men in their early flying machines.
Of course it is an easy read for me and at my age, and I should surely hope so! But maybe I can share that book with one of my great-grandkids someday. It is cute, easy to read, and well illustrated. World War I is now in the distant past for kids today, so some will not get it as I did. Of course with all the video games now, who knows? Although you won't see me reading it at work during my lunch break, it sure gave me some happy memories as I paged through it.
I am giving it 4 stars for two reasons. One, it was important to me. The other reason is to honor those brave men in their early flying machines.
November 29, 2011
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.
July 2, 2019
I’ve always enjoyed the Peanuts and my son does to. Even knowing nothing about WWI and fighter planes, its imagery and sentiment are still genius. I can’t say it’s truly funny, amusing because if its absurdity. It’s all happening in Snoopy’s imagination, just like many kids and we are the observers like Charlie is in one panel/page. Snoopy’s expressions, the use of his doghouse as various set pieces and other mundane objects’ incorporation tell a story better than a thousand words and his monologue is priceless and poignant, if you think about it.
February 11, 2015
It's Snoopy therefore flawless.
May 12, 2013
One of my favorite childhood books.
November 25, 2011
Great.
March 5, 2016
One of the first books I learned to read with. Fond memories still.
July 14, 2021
3 1/2 stars
April 15, 2012
This copy is one of my treasures .... first edition :o))
March 25, 2021
With Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace, this story follows Snoopy trying to get away from the Red Baron and wishing he could "get him".
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 29, 2011
great small collection of snoopy cartoons
May 24, 2025
5 stars no notes.
September 20, 2007
never get tired of snoopy
January 16, 2012
Of course I'm very partial to anything Peanuts but buy far this is one of my favorites.
September 24, 2012
The best history of WWI that I have ever read.
May 27, 2014
A classic!!!
August 6, 2015
snoopy has no peer
April 9, 2023
I really got a kick of this hilarious cartoon book.
June 15, 2025
“In the tradition of the great war novels, it is an odyssey of love, guts, and tears.” The plot is the title. One image or panel of a strip per page. I like the big, full-page images on solid color pages. Also, epic images of Flying Ace Snoopy posing or flying, a memorable silhouette, and of course shaking his fist at the cursed Red Baron. Loses a star because it’s not longer, and because Red Baron shoots Flying Ace Snoopy down three times!
March 20, 2024
Hell. Yeah.
But how can I bear to leave her? Perhaps someday I can return… “Au revoir, mademoiselle… Au revoir!” Ah, what a pity… Her heart is breaking.
But how can I bear to leave her? Perhaps someday I can return… “Au revoir, mademoiselle… Au revoir!” Ah, what a pity… Her heart is breaking.
May 25, 2025
Really related to Snoopy when he yelled, "AAUGH!"
November 13, 2025
This is a beautiful edition and I need to add one to my own collection. This was one of my introductions to war as a child and I’m glad for that.
July 15, 2023
Dunkirk like experience
September 24, 2013
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. :)
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. :)
June 17, 2019
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.
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.
February 25, 2018
I picked this up at the Friends of the Library Book Sale today, because it brought back pleasant memories from childhood. Not just of the book, which I read at about age 10 or 11, but other Peanuts strips with Snoopy as the World War I flying ace and of course the song by the Royal Guardsmen. Another book to share with the grandchildren.
June 30, 2019
As I have posted prior, I am a huge Peanuts fan.
This book is from 1966, and my daughter bought this for me, as she found it in a secondhand bookstore.
It is the classic tale of Snoopy fighting the Red Baron.
A MUST for any Peanuts book collector!
This book is from 1966, and my daughter bought this for me, as she found it in a secondhand bookstore.
It is the classic tale of Snoopy fighting the Red Baron.
A MUST for any Peanuts book collector!
February 22, 2017
So much fun reading these with my daughter Iris!
November 30, 2017
Everyone loves Snoopy and his great battle with Red Barron!
July 6, 2019
Schulz's artwork is amazing, especially when Snoopy's sneaking through enemy lines in France.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews