3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows [Hardcover]

Ann Brashares (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 13, 2009

summer is a time to grow

seeds
Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead.

roots
Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. . .

leaves
Ama is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products.
It is a new summer. And a new sisterhood. Come grow with them.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7–10—Incoming freshmen at the same high school that the original sisterhood attended, Ama, Jo, and Polly are learning that falling out of friendship is an unfortunate part of growing up. They're spending the summer apart—uprooted—dealing with divorce, unmet expectations, and, of course, boys. Fans of Brashares will likely be thrilled to get their hands on Willows, yet the story falls short of offering the chick-lit genre anything new. Undoubtedly, though, readers will become involved with the girls as they grow their separate ways, ultimately realizing that the roots of their friendship have never really come undone. The sweet (near sappy) novel will find a place on the to-read list of many tweens and teens.—Emily Chornomaz, Brooklyn Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Brashares begins a new sisterhood series, with occasional cameos from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants gang. Ama, Jo, and Polly originally met in third grade. Now it’s the summer before high school, and they’re all dealing with disappointments and difficulties. Ghana-born overachiever Ama is horrified with her assignment to a summer wilderness camp instead of the academic program she was hoping for. Jo is dealing with her parents’ separation and the wildly attractive boy at work. Free-spirit Polly is struggling to transform herself into a model through radical dieting and modeling camps. There are glimpses of Tibby and Lena from the Pants series, but readers seeking old friends from the wildly popular series will be disappointed. However, Brashares has created an eminently likable trio of girls that tweens and younger teens will enjoy getting to know, and unlike the last Sisterhood books, there’s no sex, just the occasional kiss. Multiple copies are in order for any community where the Sisterhood series is popular. Grades 6-10. --Debbie Carton

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers; First Edition edition (January 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385736762
• ISBN-13: 978-0385736763
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #158,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ann Brashares is the bestselling author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Girls in Pants, Forever in Blue, The Last Summer (of You and Me), and My Name is Memory.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Sisterhood December 30, 2008

By K. Coombs VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

As her subtitle implies, 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows is intended to build on the success of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, and in fact, Brashares's new characters speak reverentially of the sisterhood (apparently word has spread). However, Brashares also pokes fun at her own cross-reference. As one character puts it, "A lot of girls in our school tried to follow in [the sisterhood's] footsteps. It's the best reason I can give for a lot of terrible-fitting jeans in our middle school."

Brashares isn't necessarily cashing in on her first series; perhaps instead of saying that she is building on the success of the Pants books, I should say that she is building on the kind of emotional and social success that a group of close friends can provide for each other. Brashares is very taken with the idea that good friends can help you through hard times. Still, her characters are far from being joined at the hip. They are independent and unique, only circling back to their friends at key moments.

The three girls in this new book--Polly, Jo, and Ama--have just finished middle school and are looking forward to high school with varying degrees of dread and anticipation. One of the dominant questions of the book is, Will old friendships survive a new era of life? As Polly, Jo, and Ama go their separate ways for summer vacation, that question hovers over them, with its deeper resonances of How am I changing? Who am I really, and who will I become?

Each girl faces her own set of challenges. For Polly, it's about self-definition. The path she chooses is utterly ill-suited to her--but Brasheres does interesting things with that. Polly must also face up to the fact that her mother is not okay, and why.

Jo is pulling away from the old group, trying to get in with a new crowd at the restaurant where she works for the summer near her family's beach house. She meets a too-charming guy and has to decide what to do about him. In addition, her parents' problems force Jo to reconsider what she wants out of life.

Ama, a classic perfectionist, is sent to a summer enrichment program where, for the first time in her life, she feels incapable of shining. How she learns to deal with failure is the theme of her summer. There's a little romance in her subplot, too. I was pleased to see that Ama is African American, by the way (literally: she was born in Ghana).

The author's framing device is three willow trees that the girls planted together when they were much younger. It's nice, though perhaps a tad expendable. However, I enjoyed the notes about willow trees that began each section of the book.

The most important thing you should know about 3 Willows is that Brashares writes very movingly about these girls. By the end of the book, I cared very much about what happened to Jo and Polly and Ama. That's the author's true gift to her readers.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, not classic February 1, 2009

By Feeding Stars to Cats

Format:Hardcover

I loved the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series and was sad to see it end so I was thrilled when it was announced Ann Brashares would be writing a new series with a whole new set of characters and a new plot. I wasn't disappointed, but I did have some qualms with the book.

3 Willows is about three girls whose friendship is on the rocks. Already it's different from Brashares's other novel in the fact that the girls are no longer close. Jo, Ama, and Polly are considerably younger than the former sisterhood as they are only preparing to enter their freshman year in high school.

What Worked:

As usual with Ann Brashares, the characters are likeable and relatable.

The plot lines are fairly interesting.

Her ideas were unique. While there was some of the original sisterhood in the girls they were all their own people and nothing felt like déjà vu.

What Didn't:

Bringing up characters from the other books. Although they were from the same area as the original foursome I didn't like the overlapping. The sisterhood is portrayed as some mythical fantasy in this novel. Polly, who baby-sits for both Tibby's family and (as it's insinuated) Carmen's little brother, meets Brian briefly. She sees him sadly sitting in
Tibby's room and thinks that he must miss her and that their relationship is complicated. I felt like this opened up a new storyline for the original four and took the focus off the new girls. Effie, Lena's sister, plays a big part in the novel but whereas before she seemed like comical relief and was a sympathetic character she is now portrayed as a horrible witch. Lena herself makes an appearance but really adds nothing to the storyline, Jo just raves about how pretty she is. Bridget is mentioned as Jo's former soccer coach but the way Jo describes her makes her look like an ice queen. Carmen's own name is never mentioned, only her younger brother's.

Polly's story was unbelievably depressing. You felt like nothing good was ever going to happened to her and I felt like her physical appearance was unnecessarily ripped on.

All in all the book was entertaining, but the charm of the original sisterhood is missing.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars somewhat formulaic tale on friendships January 5, 2009

By guitarchick24 VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Ann Brashares, author of the bestselling "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series, has come out with a new book about a new sisterhood.

The girls of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants have grown up and gone off to college. But to fourteen-year-olds Polly, Jo, and Ama, they are a legend and inspiration. Unfortunately for the threesome, they are nothing like the original Sisterhood: they used to be close, but when they hit junior high, their friendship fell apart. Now in the summer before they begin high school, they split up across the country for separate adventures. Jo heads to the beach for a new job that will bring her into contact with cool older students; Polly becomes obsessed with modeling and goes to modeling camp; and Ama spends her summer in Wyoming on a hiking adventure. Though miles - and lives - apart, the girls realize that their friendship, like the willow trees they planted as children together, is still strong and eternal.

I never read the original Sisterhood series, although I did see the first movie. It didn't stay with me, but the concept was cute: a group of friends who are connected in their summer apart by "magical pants." "3 Willows" takes that concept backward - Polly, Jo, and Ama are apart but their absence from each other brings them back together. And that's where I thought the book was weakest. Each of the girls' stories are compelling and interesting; there's a lot of hard situations that each of them have to face. But I found it hard to believe that by being apart they would want to rely on each other, when they hadn't talked in awhile. I think the book would have been more believable had they spent their summer together instead, so when the final crisis comes it makes sense that they show solidarity. They also never have a trio heart-to-heart, so when they renew their friendship I didn't quite believe it. Plus, since Brashares has already used the "summer apart" concept, the book felt rather unoriginal to me.

I also felt that some of the situations were a little too intense for the age group. There's a scene where Jo talks about having a "kissing hangover" - kind of a fun way to describe that heady, brain-scrambled feeling. The author goes on to say that Jo's first kiss was like drinking one beer, whereas the kiss with the summer guy was bigger than that. I know that underage drinking happens, and kids party, but I didn't necessarily like the implication that a 14-year-old already knew what a buzz (or worse) felt like. The target reading group I'm sure will know what a hangover is, but they don't need the inference that underage drinking is okay.

As a new reader to Ann Brashares, I wasn't impressed. "3 Willows" will probably appeal more to the target age group (preteen to high school) or to fans of the original, and I'm guessing superior, "Sisterhood" series.