[Everybody] likes Peanuts, and that is as much a tribute to Mr. Schulz's Lilliputian genius as it is to his avoidance of controversy. The Peanuts children precociously know that life can be lousy and their popularity from the late fifties on may be due to their reflecting a secret, self-doubting, self-questioning mood abroad in the nation: Charlie Brown is everybody's loser because everybody is a loser much of the time. Peanuts offers a gentle philosophy of human relations, of stoically coping with existence, that is the underside of the preachments of those eupeptic middle-class yeasayers from Norman Vincent Peale to "How to Be Your Own Best Friend." (p. 7)

Richard R. Lingeman, in The New York Times Book Review (© 1975 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), December 7, 1975.