With MUTTS, Patrick McDonnell has spent three decades capturing the quiet joys of life through that beloved comic strip (alongside a library of bestselling children’s books). On October 7, he revisits Mooch the cat and Earl the dog in The Gift of Everything, a follow-up to his classic The Gift of Nothing. Like its predecessor, the new picture book celebrates gratitude, friendship, and the beauty of simply being together.
The inspiration, as McDonnell admitted on a crisp autumn day over Zoom, came in a most unexpected way.
“Two Thanksgivings ago, my niece at Thanksgiving dinner just joked that I should do a book called The Gift of Everything,” McDonnell said. “Yeah, we all laughed…and then a whole story came into my head.”
The timing was also quite fortuitous: It happened to be the 20th anniversary of MUTTS: The Gift of Nothing. As McDonell said, “I thought it could be fun to do a follow-up book and maybe have them both come out at the same time.”
The Endless Power of MUTTS
For McDonnell, though, the themes at the heart of both books — gratitude, generosity, and presence — remain deeply resonant.
“The holidays are such a magical season,” McDonnell said. “We get caught up in the commercial aspect of it. But I think we all know the true meaning of the holidays and the gift-giving. It’s not presents, but your presence…the best gift you can give is your time and your care and your attention.”
In The Gift of Everything, Mooch once again faces the dilemma of what to give his best friend, Earl.
“At the end of both books, he gives him something more than just the typical consumer present — he gives himself,” McDonnell said. “I think that’s a message that resonates with kids and adults.”
Courtesy of Abrams.
A New Creative Approach
While McDonnell’s storytelling feels timeless, The Gift of Everything also represents something of a creative experiment.
“I’ve never done a book just in color pencils — and actually only four color pencils: red, yellow, blue, and black,”McDonnell said. “That was probably the most fun part of the book. It’s liberating to limit your color choices. It has a little of a Curious George look.”
The decision wasn’t entirely planned, as McDonell added, “I just started playing with different tools that just seemed to say, ‘do this crayon.’ So many kinds of color pencils. It just felt right.”
Even the writing style surprised him — it was about letting go to do something novel.
“I don’t necessarily feel like [rhyme] is my strong suit, but sometimes the books kind of write themselves,” McDonnell said. “The magic of creating is to just get out of the way and let the universe take over. For this book, for whatever reason, it didn’t start out as rhyming, but it soon turned into rhyming. It just seemed right for it.”
Courtesy of Abrams.
A Lifelong Love of Comics and Holidays
McDonnell’s memories of the holiday season are inextricably tied to his lifelong love of comics.
“My mom always put cartoon paperbacks in our stockings — Peanuts, Mad Magazine, B.C., Dennis the Menace,” McDonnell said. “We would get up at four o’clock in the morning in the dark and look at them by moonlight.”
He also vividly remembers watching A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time as a child.
“I was a big Peanuts fan — it’s the reason I became a cartoonist,” McDonell said. “The excitement of my favorite comic strip being animated…and it lived up to the promise. That special, to this day, is magical.”
That tradition carries into his own work.
“Every year I always do a Christmas story in MUTTS—mainly because of Peanuts,” McDonell said. “It’s a long tradition in comics, and I always felt like that’s a special time.”
Courtesy of Abrams.
The Enduring Bond of Mooch and Earl
Mooch and Earl, he says, are similarly rooted in real life and it’s more charming qualities.
”Mooch started based on my own dog, Earl. I didn’t get a dog until I was 30, and boy, he was the perfect dog—just like Snoopy,” McDonell said “He inspired me to do a comic strip about him.”
McDonnell’s goal was to capture the real quirks of pets, adding, “I wanted the animals to be as animal-like as possible. People see their own cats and dogs in Mooch and Earl, the special bond they have. That’s a big part of the strip: expressing the joy and peace they bring us.”
He even collaborated with spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle on a book exploring how pets help us live in the moment.
“It was all about how dogs and cats help us stay in the present moment and how their spiritual beings can help us,” McDonell said. “That’s part of the message of MUTTS — the compassion and empathy they bring towards us.”
Courtesy of Abrams.
Evolving as an Artist
Reflecting on more than 30 years of MUTTS, McDonnell sees his own growth mirrored in his characters.
“Nothing’s really planned. It’s more like life — it’s taken one day at a time. But when you look back, you realize how much things have changed,” McDonell said. “If you look at Snoopy, he changed so many times over the years. The same with Mooch and Earl — they kind of evolved the way we evolve.”
Even as he experiments with large-scale abstract paintings (view them here), sometimes mixing Jack Kirby’s superheroes into his canvases, McDonnell’s guiding principle remains the same: to give back the joy comics gave him.
“Krazy Kat, Jack Kirby, Charles Schulz gave me so much joy,” McDonell said. “The object is to try to give some of that back.”
With The Gift of Everything, McDonnell once again distills that joy into a story simple enough for children and profound enough for adults. “Give me something that I’ll remember,” he said with a laugh. In Mooch and Earl’s latest adventure, he’s done just that.
The Gift of Everything is out October 7 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
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