The Mutts Summer Diaries is perfect summertime reading for 8 and up

Mutts is an institution. It’s how a cat and dog, plus the occasional crab, mussel, dolphin or farm animal see the world. Mooch and Earl, the main guardians of Mutts are eternally optimistic. They do see some things that aren’t all, pardon the pun, puppies and kittens. These are things like the environment or animals that are up for adoption; yet even when our animal friends encounter these things they do it with a sense of optimism and hope, rather than despair or guilt. Mutts is back with a new collection of comic strips, The Mutts Summer Diaries, just in time for road trips, easy summer reading and good books under a shade tree.

The Mutts Summer Diaries is the final season in the ‘diary series’. I guarantee you that if you pick up any of the other three seasons you’ll find them just as entertaining. Personally, I can think of very few jobs that are as challenging as a daily comic strip creator. Create characters that people want to see every day, then have the main medium that it’s delivered in shift to an online presence and continue making a quality product. That is the great thing about having quality comic strips collected in a graphic novel format.

These strips are previously printed online and in newspapers. However, for those that don’t subscribe to a newspaper or have the strips emailed to them this is brand new stuff. It’s also classic comedy that you’ll be reading 20 years from now. As I write this I’m looking over my Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes book from the 70s, 80s and 90s. From time to time I still look at them and laugh. My children also look at them and while they don’t have the same memories of them as me, they laugh. They sneak the books out of my office, read them, laugh and then try to put them back in the book shelf at just the same angle so I won’t be able to tell if they’ve been in here.

The Mutts Summer Diaries is printed on recycled paper, as are all of Patrick McDonnell’s books. Some of the strips make you laugh out loud. Some make you grin because they resemble a person or pet that you once had. Other strips make you think about the animals that you’ve seen for adoption.  Our 9 year-old has finally started to enjoy Mutts. He’s had cats and dogs for most of his life and I hope that he thinks of some of our pets who have crossed the rainbow bridge when he laughs along. Even if he had never had any pets, Mutts is a comic strip that he’d enjoy because of its uncanny ability to make anthropomorphic animals even more animal-or even more human, depending on the strip.