Although made of sugar and spice, they are not always nice. The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library will host Sugar and Spice: Little Girls in the Funnies, from Sept. 17 through Jan. 5, 2007. Lucy Shelton Caswell, founder and current curator of the library, is on the board of the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” approached Shelton Caswell as a consultant when he and his wife were considering building a museum. The museum board was brainstorming ideas for exhibitions when they decided to focus on little girls in the comics.

“I knew this library had the other half of what it took to do this show,” Shelton Caswell said. The library has a unique collection of “Peanuts” memorabilia that includes rare books and figurines of the classic comic strip.

The exhibition features little girls who spend time with their families and are protagonists and sidekicks of boys.

As curator of the exhibition, Shelton Caswell chose the themes and selected the pieces.

“I tried to choose the most representative and I knew I would have a finite space,” she said. “That is part of the challenge of curating an exhibition. ‘Nancy’ and ‘Little Orphan Annie’ are a couple of givens that you had to have.”

Most of the strips in the show are the property of the library, except for the Peanuts,” which are from the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif.

The show started in Santa Rosa and stayed there two and a half months before moving to OSU.

The exhibition starts with Richard Felton Outcault’s “Buster Brown” and Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo in Slumberland.”

“In the history of comics these were very important,” Caswell said. The comics began with little boy protagonists but the “girl sidekicks in comics like ‘Peanuts’ functioned more as real characters than decorations.”

“We are very fortunate to have ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ because that work hasn’t been exhibited very much,” she said. “I thought it would be fun to use one with Lucy because she irritated Calvin so much.”

The strip comes from Bill Waterson’s personal collection and is on display at the library until the exhibition is over.

Shelton Caswell said “Dimples,” by Grace G. Drayton, is significant because Drayton worked on strips before moving on to do commercial work on the Campbell Soup kids of the early 20th century.

The exhibition also features “Little Orphan Annie” by Harold Gray. In this 1929 strip, Annie is taking care of Daddy Warbucks after he was injured in a helicopter accident.

“(This is) typical Orphan Annie, put your hand over your heart and salute the United States,” Shelton Caswell said. “Annie is too perfect.”

She said that she prefers more normal and mischievous girls like Robert M. Brinkerfoff’s Little Mary Mix-up, or Lynda Barry’s portrayal of Marly. Caswell said that Marly is a very different protagonist compared to other strips because she is vulnerable and we understand that she is not a super child like Annie. “That’s why she is so interesting.”

Comics like “Family Circus” by Bill Keane and “Blondie” by Murat Bernard “Chic” Young portray the 1950s stereotype of

a perfect family. But “For Better or Worse,” by Lynn Johnson, depicts a typical family with the problems and difficulties of everyday life, and the characters are always growing and changing.

Caswell started the library in 1977 when Milton Keniff donated his papers to OSU. She also teaches editorial cartoon and history of newspaper comic strips at OSU.

The exhibition is free and open to the public, located at 1858 Neil Ave. Mall, around the corner from the Wexner Center for the Arts.