The second volume of Fantagraphic's ambitious project to reprint the complete "Peanuts" comic strips, this collection begins to show more flashes of the brilliance that would be a frequent hallmark of the strip in later years. The artwork is still pretty pedestrian, and most of the gags are still pretty lame, but all is improving. This collection introduces Pig-Pen, and Lucy's long-standing crush on a suddenly more mature Schroeder begins here. There is an atypical sequence in which Lucy is on the verge of winning a grown ladies' golf tournament, and page 113 features a particularly funny cartoon which I now realize was almost directly lifted by Bill Watterson for one of his best "Calvin and Hobbes" strips. ( )

Charles Schulz taught me to read. What better gift?