English Daily: Comic Strips: Peanuts by Schulz

Engramme: Your Daily English Programme #52: 'Peanuts' by Schulz (Reading B1-B2)

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in a series of boxes, called panels, that tell a joke or a brief story with words appearing in speech bubbles or captions.

Think Before You Listen

a. Do you read any comic strips? Which one(s)? What do you like about them?

b. Have you ever heard of the "Peanuts" comic strip? What do you know about it? Why is it so popular? Who are its main characters?

On October 2, 1950, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz was first published, as a daily strip, in nine newspapers across the United States.

Time to Read

Read the Passage Below¹: The first sentence in each paragraph of the text has been omitted. Which paragraphs do the following sentences belong to²? Explain your choices.

1. Peanuts achieved considerable success with its television specials...

2. In 2013, TV Guide ranked the Peanuts television specials the fourth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time...

3. Peanuts is a daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)...

4. Peanuts is one of the many strips with philosophical, psychological, and sociological connotations...

5. The strip focuses entirely on a social circle of young children...

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__________________________________________. Its publication began on October 2, 1950, and continued until February 13, 2000, a day after Schulz’s death. This comic strip is the most popular and influential in the history of comic strips, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it "…the longest story ever told by one human being" (Huff Post, Oct 3, 2013). At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with 355 million readers in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.

__________________________________________, where adults exist but are rarely seen or heard. The main character, Charlie Brown, is meek, nervous, and lacks self-confidence. He is unable to fly a kite, win a baseball game, or kick a football held by his cruel friend Lucy, who always pulls it away at the last instant.

__________________________________________ that flourished in the 1950s. The strip's humor (at least during its '60s peak) is psychologically complex, and the characters' interactions formed a web of relationships that helped the story to move on.

__________________________________________, several of which, including A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin,Charlie Brown, won or were nominated for Emmy Awards. The Peanuts holiday specials are still popular and are currently broadcast on ABC in the U.S. Peanuts also had success in the theater, with the stage musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown being a successful and often-performed production.

__________________________________________. A computer-animated feature film based on the strip, The Peanuts Movie, was released on November 6, 2015.

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(see the original Wikipedia article to compare your answers)

Let's Practice

Read the Passage More Carefully: Find words in the text (and in the omitted sentences) that have the same meaning as the following words:

1. moment =	6. completely, fully =
2. (hidden) meaning =	7. unkind =
3. shy =	8. develop, grow =
4. significant, important =	9. huge =
5. height, highest point =	10. make available (for purchase) =

(see the first comment below to check your answers)

Over to You

Do you know of other well-known comic strips? Who are their characters? What are they famous for?

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Teachers can download a Print-Friendly Version of this lesson at this link (pdf).

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1 Passage from the Wikipedia article "Peanuts", reproduced here with minor changes.^↩
2 Remember: You do not need to know the meaning of all the words in the text to complete this exercise. Instead, try and scan the text for related key words or skim for main ideas that relate the sentences together.^↩