THE BOY THEY CALLED A HORSE

And now… the rest of the story. Every year, families across America gather around the television. They’ll watch a bald kid try to kick a football. They’ll watch a beagle dance on a dog house. They’ll watch Charlie Brown get a rock instead of candy. They’ll laugh. They won’t know they’re watching a man’s autobiography. When Charles Schulz was a little boy, the other children called him “Sparky.” It wasn’t a term of affection. Sparky was the name of a horse in the comic strip Barney Google. A dumb horse. A joke horse. They were calling him an animal. And...