Peppermint Patty and Marcie are throwing a New Year's Eve party and Patty invites Charlie Brown. But Chuck has a school assignment to read "War and Peace" and he hasn't even started it. Decent Peanuts holiday special. Better than the more recent stuff but nowhere near as good as the '60s and '70s stuff. The voicework is OK although Jeremy Miller made Linus a little more annoying than he's supposed to be, I think. The music, including the songs "Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick" and the terrible musical chairs one, makes me miss Vince Guaraldi. There's one central idea here that really isn't very funny or interesting (Charlie Brown having to read "War and Peace") and everything else seems to be padding to fill time. They could have done a more amusing cartoon with more focus on the party. More Peppermint Patty is never a bad thing. As it is, the whole thing feels like one long obvious lesson to kids about procrastination. At least I think that was the point. The problem is this isn't a very funny cartoon and the central problem facing Charlie here isn't interesting. It's lacking the wit, heart, and charm that made the classic specials so endearing.

The teacher assigns Charlie Brown's class to do a book report on War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Peppermint Patty tells Charlie Brown about her New Year Party. He drops in on dance class and Peppermint Patty grabs him. He continues to struggle with the book while she keeps dropping hints about an invitation. He tells her about inviting the little red haired girl, Heather. He decides to put the invitation in her mail slot but his hand gets caught. At the party, Peppermint Patty wins musical chairs and continues to drop hints on the clueless Charlie Brown. He is left alone reading the book and falling asleep. Heather shows up and Charlie Brown miss her. In the end, he gets a D- for his book report. Even worst, they have to read Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.I just can't get over that Charlie Brown is reading War and Peace. It's pretty outlandish. I do like a jealous Peppermint Patty. She has a great awkward charm about her. They could have had more fun with her and Marcie in this one. The style is still as charming as ever.

Well, New Year's Eve is coming up but poor Charlie Brown is stuck with having to read "War and Peace" (which is about a thousand pages) for his school book report. On top of that, Peppermint Patty invites him for her and Marcie's party while Linus tries to avoid Sally and her calling him her "Sweet Baboo". Oh, and there's a certain "Little Red Haired Girl" that Charlie's crazy about...Another funny and insightful "Peanuts" special with a wonderful script by creator Charles Schulz, direction by Sam Jaimes and usual helmer Bill Melendez, and a not bad musical score by Ed Bogas and Desiree Goyette who also wrote a couple of songs as well as sang on one of them. Too bad no one thought to put the late Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" in there but otherwise, this was another fine "Peanuts" holiday special.

"No book report has ever been finished by just reading the dust jacket." The history of Charlie Brown is a timeline of things that happened while he was looking the other way. Everyone has that story of how they left the ballgame early and missed the greatest play in sports history. Poor Charlie Brown lives every day like that. You can keep your Willie Loma and John Procter. The greatest tragic hero in American literature is a boy named Charlie Brown.This is a very good special, and it includes the famous "Pig-Pen" Hoedown scene.