Charlie and his friends discover the true meaning of Christmas.

Charlie Brown has a crush on the little red-haired girl and wants to invite her to the Valentine's Day dance, but she doesn't know that he exists.

The second volume is packed with intriguing developments, as Schulz continues to create his tender and comic universe. It begins with Peanuts' third full year and a cast of eight: Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty, Violet, Schroeder, Lucy, the recently-born Linus, and Snoopy. By the end of 1954, Pigpen and his dust cloud join the crowd. Linus, who still doesn't speak, begins to emerge as one of the most complex and endearing characters in the strip: garrulous...

As the 1950s close down, Peanuts definitively enters its golden age. Linus, who had just learned to speak in the previous volume, becomes downright eloquent and even begins to fend off Lucy's bullying; even so, his security neurosis becomes more pronounced, including a harrowing two-week "Lost Weekend" sequence of blanketlessness. Charlie Brown cascades further down the hill to loser Dom, with spectacularly lost kites, humiliating baseball losses...

Launching into the 1960s, Schulz adds another new cast member. Two, in fact: The obnoxious Frieda of "naturally curly hair" fame, and her inert, seemingly boneless cat Faron. The rapidly maturing Sally, who was after all just born in the previous volume, is ready to start kindergarten and not at all happy about it. Lucy and Linus' war over the security blanket escalates, with Lucy burying it, cutting it apart, and, in the longest sequence of the book,...

We are now in the mid-1960s, one of Schulz's peak periods of creativity (and one third of the way through the strip's life!). Snoopy has become the strip's dominant personality, and this volume marks two milestones for the character: the first of many "dogfights" with the nefarious Red Baron, and the launch of his writing career ("It was a dark and stormy night..."). Two new characters―the first two from outside the strip's regular little neighborhood―make...