Two-By-Fours: A Dull Read But an Interesting Showcase for Schulz

When I go to the annual week-long book fair sponsored by my local library system, I always expect a few unusual books to catch my eye. A couple of years ago, my friend Libbie discovered one for me: a slim Christian parenting guide from 1965 entitled Two-By-Fours. What makes this hardcover, slightly larger than the typical gift book, so interesting is that one of the authors is Charles Schulz. The front cover features a pair of children who, while not actual characters from the Peanuts comic strip, would fit right in as neighborhood children. With just a tiny glance, any Schulz fan will be able to recognize his handiwork.

The book, or at least my edition of it, does not include any authorial notes, so I can’t say for sure, but the impression that I get is that although Schulz is listed first, and in much larger print, the book’s actual writing was done by Kenneth F. Hall, while Schulz furnishes the full-page illustrations. Each one is a single-panel cartoon set against a background of white, red, purple, red and white or purple and white. Black, white, purple and red are the only colors in the book, giving it a fairly bland look, which is rather appropriate since it’s kind of a bland book.

The main text is divided into four sections, each of which deals with a different aspect of life for a “two-by-four,” which is Hall’s way of describing children between the ages of two and four. The first deals with a child’s gradual awareness of his or her identity, while the second discusses the role of a two-by-four in the family at large. The third delves into interacting with other children and adults outside the home, and the fourth focuses specifically on the church setting.

The book contains some decent insights into what life is like for a child of this age, including the struggle of being bullied by older siblings and feeling jealous of younger siblings, the difficulty a child has in understanding big concepts like time and space, and the ways in which clear instructions and discipline help children to understand the adult world better. While only the fourth chapter focuses on how a child relates to the church, the previous three chapters foreshadow this with comments about how a parent should set a foundation upon which the church can build.

The concepts are generally fine, if a bit on the idealized side. Hall tends to write in broad generalities like, “The kids around the neighborhood don’t begin to compare with his own kin. His family is the center of his universe.” While he touches briefly on the possibility of episodes of disharmony in the home, he seems to assume that the home environment of anyone reading is a pleasant one, that all disciplinary measures are appropriate, that siblings, even if they act out occasionally, truly and deeply love each other. It comes across as a bit naïve, as does the assertion that children this age naturally find churches to be fascinating and welcoming places.

What’s more, the writing is, for the most part, dull and dry, and the format of the book does not particularly work in its favor as most pages do not end with the end of a sentence. Thus, you have a page of text followed by two full-page cartoons, and by the time you get to the next page you’ve lost your place. When I read this, I have to keep reminding myself to stop before the last sentence on the page or else to keep reading and then backtrack. It doesn’t really matter because most of the cartoons, while relating to the chapter at large, don’t apply specifically to a point in the text.

The main reason, then, to get this book is for Schulz’s cartoons, which I’m sure is what the publisher was banking on with the prominence of Schulz and his work on the cover. Out of 37 pages, 23 are full-page cartoons, while four pages feature smaller illustrations alongside the text. The children he draws are cute and expressive, meant to look just slightly younger than most of the Peanuts gang. It’s fun to look at the pictures and match the kids up with established characters from the strip and see whether the dialogue caption seems like something that character might actually say.

Most of the cartoons reflect a certain degree of confusion that these youngsters feel with the world around them and with the church and its doctrines. The philosophical queries some of the children pose make me think of Linus Van Pelt; it’s easy to imagine him having these same sorts of thoughts, particularly at a slightly younger age. I also thought of Sally Brown during some of the whinier panels in which children bemoan the unfairness of their lot in life.

“How could a loving God ever have made big brothers?” one exasperated tyke grumbles as a much older boy saunters by. Another works with a seatmate to stack up hymnals so that he can use them as a booster seat on the pew in order to enable him to see the pastor as he preaches. Some of the children are anxious, some are distraught and some are content enough to look as though they belong in the Schulz classic Happiness Is a Warm Puppy. This is especially true of the final panel in which a boy happily tucked into bed proclaims that “going to church is something like having a night-light.”

As a toddler instruction manual for parents who want to raise their children in a Christian environment, I don’t think this quite hits the mark. However, as a pithy showcase of Schulz’s mid-60s work, full of kids who look like they belong in Peanuts but don’t quite, Two-By-Fours is a fascinating find.