★Schulz, Charles M. The Big Book of Peanuts: All the Daily Strips from the 1990s. Andrews McMeel. Oct. 2024. 544p. ISBN 9781524890469. $45. COMICS

The fifth volume in Andrews McMeel’s collection of Schulz’s Peanuts comic strips gathers all the daily strips from 1990 through the final daily strip on January 3, 2000, which ran 10 days before the cartoonist’s death at age 77. Unlike Fantagraphics’s 26-volume collection that grouped two years’ worth of strips, this series economically collects an entire decade of daily strips in each of its five volumes. (There are no color Sunday strips.) Although Lucy and Linus Van Pelt’s younger brother, Rerun, joined the strip in the early 1970s, he only became a major character in the 1990s. There are several more highlights in this collection. After decades of bad luck playing baseball, in 1993, Charlie Brown finally hit two home runs and won two games. In 1965, Snoopy began typing his novel, which starts with “It was a dark and stormy night”; on Oct. 27, 1995, Snoopy’s publisher says they will print it (one copy, and if it sells, they will print another). Charlie Brown’s long-time crush, the Little Red-Haired Girl (introduced in 1961), makes her sole in-person appearance in the May 25, 1998, strip—albeit in silhouette. VERDICT Collecting one of the most popular, beloved, and influential comic strips ever created, this volume and the four preceding it are essential purchases for all libraries.