PAWS – Volumes 1 – 4

by Kevin Wolf

PAWS is a four-volume series about middle school girl friends who love animals, but for different reasons can’t have their own pets. Each volume is narrated by a different protagonist who’s immediately known from the alliterative title of each graphic novel. The first volume has three friends with the fourth friend introduced in the second volume. Gabby Gets It Together (Volume 1) introduces the three diverse best friends, Gabby Jordan (5^th grade), Priya Gupta (6^th grade), and Mindy Park (6^th grade). Medical issues are age-appropriately peppered in the various volumes including, animal allergies, obsessive cleanliness, social media addiction, falling injuries, and physical disability. There’re lots of life lessons, especially with relationships between friends and parents-children. We get to know the characters more deeply as each story unfolds. I enjoyed the whole series.

Gabby, Priya, and Mindy share a classroom, because their school (Charlotte Brontë Elementary in East Vancouver, Canada) has multi-age kids in the same classroom. The friends love animals. Priya’s parents are Reema and Suresh. Reema’s “super allergic to all kinds of stuff—including animals … she gets all sneezy and puffy and stuff? … She has one of those EpiPen thingies in her purse all the time in case it gets really bad [p. 21].” Priya has twin younger brothers (Amir and Ajit). The family speaks Hindi <translations shown in angle brackets> at home.

The friends are often looking at cute animal videos. One panel summarizes their frustration, when Priya states, “… there’s nothing we can do … your [Mindy’s] place [rented apartment] bans pets, my mom is allergic, and Gabby’s dad is nuts [29]!” Gabby’s dad is a “neat freak” (perhaps with undiagnosed mild OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)) doesn’t want any animal hair on his clothes or furnishings nor deal with animal poop. Through their testing of many ideas, the besties eventually land on afterschool dog walking and name themselves PAWS (Pretty Awesome WalkerS) This leads to numerous life lessons around planning, deciding on a uniform (from thrift store), scheduling, financial issues (costs and prices), equipment (poop bags, GPS tags in case animals run off) parental approvals and oversight, exhaustion, finding clients, learning animal foibles, strained friendships, parental and dog-walking responsibilities, frustrations, venting, and successes.

PAWS, volume 1, page 29, panel 2

Here’s two lessons from Gabby Gets It Together. After one outbreak of Reema’s allergy from dog hair on their clothes, Gabby’s dad—the neat freak—has a proposal. To allow dog-walking to continue, he suggests that Priya leave spare clean clothes at Gabby’s home and every day after Priya drops back off her dogs at each dog’s home, Priya would go to Gabby’s house and change into the clean clothes; periodically adding new clothes before school. That night Gabby’s dad would wash—which he loves to do—Priya’s dog walking clothes, so she’d go home without dog hair, and she’d have clean dog walking clothes ready for the next day. And there was a lesson about parental responsibility. Gabby’s dad says, “You know I’m going to need to come with you to meet your clients and make sure they’re safe and … [after Gabby’s snark] Look, it’s not just for your safety … I’m sure there are a lot of people who wouldn’t trust their dogs to a bunch of kids without knowing that there’s a responsible adult involved. [emphasis in original, 85]”

Volume 2 (Mindy Makes Some Space) covers Mindy’s emotional sensitivities. Mindy’s home life and potential expansion of the PAWS crew become sore points. We’re introduced to Hazel, a new kid at school in a wheelchair for an unknown disability, which is explained in Hazel’s book (Volume 4). Mindy feels like she’s being pushed away at home and by her friends at school. Her friends enjoy Hazel’s company and Mindy’s mom (Sun Hee “Sunny”) post-divorce, starts a new relationship with fellow Horde of Heroes gamer, Michael. Mindy’s jealousies grow.

Michael owns an oversized cat, Chonk, who’s in need of exercise and actually likes spending some time outside on a leash.

Now on to Mindy’s frustrations. As Michael and Sunny grow closer, Mindy becomes more petulant and not wanting to share her mother. That same feeling occurs at school when Hazel joins their classroom and grows closer to Priya and Gabby. Mindy’s mom pushes Mindy into accepting Michael’s invitation to walk Chonk.

It all comes to a head when Priya and Gabby invite Hazel to join their dog-walking group, PAWS. Mindy tries to solve her “problems” by assigning Hazel to walk Chonk. By the end of the day, everyone is annoyed with each other. Hazel because she’s being judged for her wheelchair and deemed only able to care for the lethargic cat; Mindy because she thinks her friends want her out of PAWS; her mom because Mindy refuses to accept Michael; and Priya and Gabby because Hazel and Mindy are upset with each other, and Priya and Gabby can’t take care of all the dogs by themselves.

Mindy’s mom points out that Charlotte Brontë Grammer School has a plaque outside the school’s gym quoting Brontë, “Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness,” from a letter to WS Williams, 1850). Mindy’s mom explains “It means we need to share! … sharing doesn’t take away from your happiness … it’s what makes happiness possible [138 – 139]!” Priya, Gabby, Hazel, and Mindy learn that feelings matter, communication has to improve, and Charlotte Brontë can provide life lessons. Lots of apologies and tears, especially from Mindy, result to bring PAWS—this time with Hazel—back together.

Volume 3 (Priya Puts Herself First) is almost all about Priya being subordinate to her friends, schoolwork, her sports, and of course, PAWS until she gets so burned out, mentally and physically exhausted that her poor health forces her to change. And we learn about the dark side and rare bright side of social media. The dark side shows Gabby addicted to her new phone, chasing after “likes,” going viral means seeking greater and greater kudos, and potentially losing actual friends. Because snow isn’t kind to Hazel in her wheelchair or seniors with walkers or canes, the bright side of social media … a rarity … is asking for and getting help from the community because you’re a kid and it’s easier to convince people to do the right thing (shovel your sidewalk).

Priya’s parents find better work in a nearby town, and they decide to move, but Priya feels her whole life (school, friends, and of course, PAWS) are in her prior community. So, Priya decides to commute daily back to where her life seems to be, resulting in waking early, long hours on buses, sleeping in class, being late and too tired for sports practices, and falling behind in everything. It all comes to a head when she thinks she’s getting a snow day off, only to find that everyone else is unavailable to take care of their dog-walking service. This forces Priya to make her way with stuck buses, un-shoveled streets, and slippery ice patches. She slips and falls and badly skins her knee, requiring stitches. Finally, there’s a confrontation with Gabby and Priya both realizing that they can’t keep doing what they’ve been doing … some things have to change. The PAWS series brilliantly continues to provide life lessons to promote a child’s well-being.

The final volume of the PAWS series (Hazel Has Her Hands Full) is devoted to Hazel’s need for independence, frustration with her mother’s overcautiousness and not being honest about those same issues. We learn the reason Hazel needs a wheelchair; she has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and Hazel narrates, “It makes it hard for my brain to talk to my muscles. Mostly it affects my legs and hips, but my arms can get really tired, too.” Hazel is able to stand for a short spell and “walk” some with a lot of outside support (such as, a railing, a wall, or other people). SMA is an inherited disability. SMA mostly starts in early childhood as shown at the end of this review with a table for various Types of SMA from SMA News Today and some descriptions. Hazel Has Her Hands Full doesn’t indicate when SMA began for Hazel; I suspect it’s Type 2 or 3 (beginning after 6 months of age through adolescence). Hazel has daily leg exercises with her mom. Hazel learns to accept her disability, but she doesn’t want others to feel sorry for her or—if they see her stand or attempt to walk—think she’s faking. Her mother is very protective of Hazel and easily angered by other people not readily accepting Hazel’s disability.

For PAWS, Hazel takes on indoor cat-sitting of Bobo and Egg for a gay couple (Tuan and Carlos), who Hazel met at her physical therapist’s office. Carlos uses a wheelchair, so their home is wheelchair accessible. Tuan and Carlos are about to take a two-week vacation and are desperate for a cat-sitter … when they learn about PAWS, they’re happy to know Hazel can care for their kitties. Hazel’s mom demands Hazel not cat sit alone, and Hazel implies Gabby will be helping, but Gabby doesn’t have the time, and Hazel never finds the right time to tell her mom the truth. The inevitable occurs late in the cat-sitting job. Through mutual frustration, anger and lost kitties, Hazel and her mom learn to understand each other’s need for independence and letting go.

In the Acknowledgments at the end of Hazel Has Her Hands Full, we learn more about MSA and the components of a wheelchair. The authors recommend the website https://www.curesma.org/. The authors write,

In the second book in the PAWS series, Mindy Makes Some Space, we wanted to introduce a new character … Hazel Miller. Since representation and diversity are very important to us, we decided that Hazel should be a wheelchair user. But we didn’t say why she uses one.

We did this for two reasons. The first … to avoid defining Hazel by her disability. People are not their disabilities. The second … for any kid who uses a wheelchair to see themselves in her place.

[In Hazel Has Her Hands Full] … it wouldn’t be possible to tell her story without talking about her disability. Disability may not define people, but it has a powerful effect on their lives. The last thing we wanted was … avoiding it.

The four books, narrated by each of PAWS’ caretakers, is an excellent portrayal of children enjoying animals, learning to take responsibilities, and growth in parent-child relationships. In addition, the storyline provides an excellent forum for middle school readers to gain some medical knowledge. I highly recommend this series for middle school readers.

From SMA News Today’s website, https://smanewstoday.com/types-of-spinal-muscular-atrophy/: