"Good Grief, Charlie Brown!"

What a treat for a Saturday afternoon - this week, a friend booked us tickets to visit the "Good Grief, Charlie Brown!" exhibition at the beautiful Somerset House.

Entering the exhibition, you are transported into a world of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Schroeder. Charles M. Shultz (1922-2000), the creator of this magical cartoon world, created an incredible 17,897 comic strips during his life! You are introduced to Shultz's early life with photos of him as a young boy with his pet dog Spike - the inspiration for Snoopy, given an insight into his time in the military in the 40s and the artists that influenced his drawing.

There are plenty of original comic strips that led to plenty of giggles and caused us to reflect on how complex some of the themes being discussed were - we'd totally overlooked this when we were small!

Halfway through the exhibition there is a "Snoopy Cinema" where we spent nearly an hour curled up on a beanbag watching Peanuts clips before heading down to the light boxes where you can trace your very own Charlie Brown and Woodstock. We struggled not to buy everything in the gift shop!

We would highly recommend this exhibition to all! The children around us were grinning from ear to ear watching Lucy stomp around trying to get Schroeder's attention, our friend had never read any of Shultz's work as a child and grew to love each of the characters as we moved throughout the exhibition and I was totally amazed at how using just a pen, each illustration came to life!

The exhibition is on until the 3rd of March 2019 and tickets are £14 each/£11 for concessions (teachers also qualify for a concession ticket if you bring proof of your job!).

Sources: https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/good-grief-charlie-brown?_ga=2.152055289.172876822.1546881931-461788168.1546881931, https://www.biography.com/people/charles-schulz-222709