The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center has announced the February 21 publication of "Li'l Beginnings," a 300-page book collecting, for the first time, all of Schulz's pre-"Peanuts" "Li'l Folks" panel cartoons as well as other early work. According to the Museum's press release: "Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings, with a foreword by Jean Schulz and annotations, editorial commentary and an introduction by Derrick Bang, includes all 135 of the panels that Schulz created for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, his hometown paper, between June 22, 1947, and January 22, 1950." Bang includes reproductions of "Peanuts" strips in his annotations, as he traces the recurrence of images and themes in Schulz's work. "The 300-page book also includes the two Just Keep Laughing cartoon panels that Schulz produced for the Catholic comic book Topix; the two Sparky's Li'l Folks panels that ran in the Minneapolis Tribune (and anticipated his series in the St. Paul Pioneer Press); and examples of single-panel cartoons that were published in The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s."

The Schulz Museum has permitted Indy Magazine to run four preview pages from the upcoming book, available below.