Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants [Hardcover]

Ann Brashares (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants | Publication Date: September 11, 2001

Carmen got the jeans at a thrift shop. They didn’t look all that great: they were worn, dirty, and speckled with bleach. On the night before she and her friends part for the summer, Carmen decides to toss them. But Tibby says they’re great. She'd love to have them. Lena and Bridget also think they’re fabulous. Lena decides that they should all try them on. Whoever they fit best will get them. Nobody knows why, but the pants fit everyone perfectly. Even Carmen (who never thinks she looks good in anything) thinks she looks good in the pants. Over a few bags of cheese puffs, they decide to form a sisterhood and take the vow of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants . . . the next morning, they say good-bye. And then the journey of the pants — and the most memorable summer of their lives — begins.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

They were just a soft, ordinary pair of thrift-shop jeans until the four girls took turns trying them on--four girls, that is, who are close friends, about to be parted for the summer, with very different sizes and builds, not to mention backgrounds and personalities. Yet the pants settle on each girl's hips perfectly, making her look sexy and long-legged and feel confident as a teenager can feel. "These are magical Pants!" they realize, and so they make a pact to share them equally, to mail them back and forth over the summer from wherever they are. Beautiful, distant Lena is going to Greece to be with her grandparents; strong, athletic Bridget is off to soccer camp in Baja, California; hot-tempered Carmen plans to have her divorced father all to herself in South Carolina; and Tibby the rebel will be left at home to slave for minimum wage at Wallman's.

Over the summer the Pants come to represent the support of the sisterhood, but they also lead each girl into bruising and ultimately healing confrontations with love and courage, dying and forgiveness. Lena finds her identity in Greece and the courage not to reject love; Bridget gets in over her head with an older camp coach; Carmen finds her father ensconced with a new fiancée and family; and Tibby unwillingly takes on a filmmaking apprentice who is dying of leukemia. Each girl's story is distinct and engrossing, told in a brightly contemporary style. Like the Pants, the reader bounces back and forth among the four unfolding adventures, and the melange is spiced with letters and witty quotes. Ann Brashares has here created four captivating characters and seamlessly interwoven their stories for a young adult novel that is fresh and absorbing. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell

From Publishers Weekly

A pair of jeans purchased at a thrift store is the unlikely bond that keeps four best friends emotionally connected during the first summer that they spend physically apart. This clever (if initially hokey-sounding) premise sets the course for four intertwined, compelling coming-of-age stories. Carmen doesn't think much of the pants she buys for $3.49, until she and her pals discover their magical quality. The jeans which fit each girl perfectly despite their very different body types serve as a surrogate friend for Tibby, Carmen, Lena and Bridget as they wrestle with new issues of first love, jealousy, fear and sadness in the months before their junior year of high school. Each girl has a turn with the pants, then sends them on to the next person in the rotation; by summer's end, when the friends are reunited, the jeans will be the symbol of what the girls have experienced. Goethals sounds every bit the teenager here, but her sometimes halting reading never quite captures the crackle of Brashares's writing style. In Goethals's command, the author's snappy asides and retorts occasionally sound cumbersome rather than humorous or biting, as they were intended. Many teen girls will likely take these shortcomings in stride and get lost in a story that speaks to them. Ages 12-up. Simultaneous release with Delacorte hardcover, reviewed in Children's Forecasts July 6.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (September 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385729332
• ISBN-13: 978-0385729338
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,048 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,355 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The pants seen 'round the world., January 21, 2002

By 

"bookboarder" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Hardcover)

With a new twist, this coming-of-age novel steals the genre for me. Ann Brashares takes us on a magical ride with the Traveling Pants and the best friends who comprise the sisterhood. Each girl experiences a different, new, aspect of life and their personality during their first summer apart in their lives. With each page, you will become closer to these girls, as they grow and begin to understand the world, and themselves.
The novel is brilliantly narrated, each girl developing a real human personality. These characters are not the 2-D characters often found in novels of this genre. Ann Brashares develops them so thoroughly, at least one of these girls rings incredibly true to my own adolescence.
Not only are they well-developed, and human, Brashares doesn't give them more wisdom than any other fifteen-year-olds would have. The characters un-annoyingly live their lives as real teenagers, and delve into human emotions that all women have experienced at some point.
If you are looking for a light read, with some underlying, and truly deeper characteristics, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is definitely one to invest in. Each girl will find her way into your heart, and possibly show you something you never knew was there.

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, June 18, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) (Paperback)

While overall, I thought this book was fine and possibly engaging for young women, I strongly think the 12 year old age guideline is too young, both for some of the contents of the plot and for the deeper and more meaningful aspects of what a girl could discover from the book. In other words, I thought the chararacters were interesting to an older teen aged girl, but 12 year olds are not teenagers. In fact, these characters are 15 and almost 16, all about to be juniors in high school. And those ages, I think, as a mother, are the appropriate ages for a girl to be reading this book. Not only is there mature sexual content and encounter (albeit, which one of the characters cannot handle), the characters themselves, and their metamorphises, what they go through that summer, what they learn about themselves, will be much more understandable and appropriate to a 14 or 15 or 16 year old, then to an impressionable 12 or 13 year old. I would liken it to reading Jane Eyre, or Little Women, before a girl is old enough to understand the levels, the deep meaning, the beauty of these books. Sure, girls of 11 and 12 are capable of reading these books, but it is the parents' jobs to say "not yet". I also am disturbed that none of the other reviewers that I read on line seem to understand that one of the characters is self-destructively manic depressive and that would be something ( in fact I would urge any mother who lets her daughter read this book) to discuss the behaviors with her daughter.

45 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN IMAGINATIVELY TOLD STORY SUPERBLY READ, November 9, 2001

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Audio Cassette)

With her debut novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," author Ann Brashares said that she hoped that teens would find it "to be the kind of book that sticks with them a bit, the way books I liked when I was that age stuck with me."

All bets are that teens will find this warm story of friendship, loyalty, and love to be that and more. Angela Goethals, who has appeared in numerous films from "Home Alone" to "Jerry Maguire" perfectly voices the joys and sorrows of four young girls who have been friends for all of their lives.

Tibby, Carmen, Lena and Bridget didn't spring from the same molds, still they're best friends. Finally, the time comes when they'll be spending their first summer apart, each going in different directions from overseas to a soccer camp to a summer with Dad.

The common thread between the girls this summer is a pair of denim threads, blue jeans, that is. Now, these aren't just an ordinary pair of jeans - these pants are imbued with a bit of magic and they fit each girl perfectly. The girls decide that the jeans should be shared, and sent back and forth from girl to girl during the summer.

That's a lot of traveling for pants, but the summer is also a lot of growing up for the girls as they face decisions, challenges, problems and experiences. But, what is paramount is the friendship between them as symbolized by the wonderful pants.

This is a "feel good" story about friendship, about unconditional loyalty and love imaginatively told and superbly read.

- Gail Cooke