Wow. I received an E-Arc from Netgalley. Review to come soon!

'Family Pets' by Pat Shand is a strange tale involving a school of wizardry and a family that gets turned in to pets. It does have one of the weirder love triangles I think I've run across in a book.

Thomasina lives in the basement of her uncle's house with her grandmother. After her parents died, her other family took her in. They are nice enough but sort of disinterested. Thomasina is kind of unnoticed at school too, except by the boy that plays French horn. Thomasina's only friend would seem to be Sebastian, her pet snake.

One morning, she wakes up and everything in her house is strange. Her family has been turned into animals and Sebastian is now a young man. She takes an odd journey to try to set things straight and has to make some choices along the way.

The whole thing is just kind of average. Not a horrible story, but not that great. The art is about average. I've seen better and worse. I liked the characters well enough, but some of them acted a bit inconsistent. The life lessons were good, but it left me unsatisfied at the end. Maybe that was meant to mirror real life, but in such a crazy, often funny story, I wanted a more solid ending.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Silver Dragon Books, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Opinião em português no blog Pepita Mágica: http://pepitamagica.blogspot.pt/2015/05/graphic-novel-family-pets-de-patrick.html

I received a digital arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love graphic novels, comics, manga and all that jazz and I love pets. So “Family Pets” sounded like a great choice for me. And I was not wrong!

“Family Pets” is a story about Thomasina, who is an orphan and lives with her Grandmother and other family members. She thinks she doesn’t belong anywhere. She only has two friends: Smitty, a French horn player, with whom she never talked, and Sebastian, her snake. One day, her entire family – except her Gramma – is transformed into pet animals and her snake became human.

Sebastian, the human-snake, was by far my favourite character, not only because he was British, but he was hilarious and the most active character in this story. Abuela, Thomasina’s Gramma, was also a really good character. She had a webpage, in which she wrote quotes from her granddaughter, uploads videos, and she didn’t act or think like an “old woman”. In spirit, she was younger than her granddaughter.

I didn’t know much about the plot of this graphic novel. I decided to face this book as an unknown thing, so I could be amazed by it, which means I wasn’t expecting half of what happened. I was so hooked to the plot that I decided to ignore my friends and just keep reading. (Sorry, guys!) Smitty was an interesting character, and somewhere in the middle of the story I thought he could have been something else. As I said, Sebastian was my favourite character because he was the “comic character” of the book; he had really good lines and was, probably, the character that was closed to me. He was always making nerdy references, which was awesome! Sebastian is my spirit animal!

Since this is a graphic novel, talk about the art is really important. I didn’t know any of the authors of this book. It was the first time I read something from them and I liked it. The story was nice, funny and interesting – it really had a good ending, some kind of “girl power” mixed with “I need to find myself and I don’t want to be defined by other people”. And the art was nice as well. All the facial expressions were there, we could understand what was happening just by looking at the drawings. It had a soul – for the lack of a better expression. It’s a really good mix of drawing and story.

Read this Graphic Novel I think back in June. It was ok, nothing crazy different. A girl learns that magic is real when she wakes up and her foster family has all been turned into animals. She has to follow the magic so that she can change them back. But her pet was just turned into a human and doesn't want to go back.... a fun little book for kids third grade on up looking for a fast light read.

This graphic novel was about a girl Thomasina who lives with her grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin. She is lonely and wants something exciting to happen. Then it does - her family turns into pets and her pet snake becomes human. Thomasina must figure out how to make things right with the help of an old friend Smitty, a wizard named Boris, and her parent.


I found the book interesting but the audience for it was unclear. The characters are all teenagers but the text and illustrations made it feel younger. I think my students will like it - quirky and a cute message.

Read as eARC from NetGalley

I enjoyed this. It felt a little bit slow at first, but, although a bit simple, I liked both the art and the story. I appreciate the positive messages and themes in the book, such as that Thomasina has to permit herself to grieve, but she has to move on with her life instead of waiting to stumble into some destiny. All of the teenage characters come to the conclusion that they have to take charge of their own lives and be true to themselves (after the figure out who they are). I was glad to see that Thomasina was a smart, strong character, and didn't end up with either of the two guys, or become a damsel in distress. The book also has a positive message, albeit tied up too neatly at the end, that families need to share their problems and difficulties for each other, since sharing burdens (especially grief and financial hardship) lightens the load.

I enjoyed the story, I just wish the illustrations had been in color.

People often think that graphic novels (and comics), only deal with superheroes or humor. While this story does have many funny moments, it also shows how grief and loss can put a survivor's life into a holding pattern. Thomasina loses both her parents in an accident when she is very young. She lives with her grandmother for a while, then they both move in with her aunt and uncle. At the beginning of the story, Thomasina is now in high school and still feels as if she is waiting for her life to start. She knows that in books and movies, when a child is orphaned, they later find out they have magical powers or some other awesome event takes place. That hasn't happened to her.

Then one morning she wakes up and her family has been turned into pets and her pet snake has been turned into a really cute teenage boy. Thomasina and her abuela are the only ones in the house still in their original form. With her former snake, Sebastian, Thomasina has to find out what happened and how to get her family back.

There are plenty of pop culture references that will make readers laugh and knowingly shake their heads. (I'm still not sure how Sebastian absorbed so much of this while he was in snake form.) There are also plenty of realistic details about how families wind up keeping secrets from each other and not bothering to communicate with one another. And for those who enjoy seeing how authors imagine the wizarding world in ways other than Harry Potter and Hogwarts, this has a new twist on the coexistence of magic and muggles.

An entertaining read for urban fantasy and graphic novel fans.

I read an e-book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.