In the beginning: The Sacramento Bee takes a look at the other big Peanuts book published this year, the Charles M. Schulz Museum's M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings:

"With Li'l Folks, you can see that Sparky already knew very strongly what he wanted to say and the impact he wanted to make on his readers. He spent those 2 1/2 years playing around with art styles. At first it was a sophisticated display of line work and, by 1950, when (the cartoon) ended, the (drawings) had a very strong resemblance to early Peanuts."