The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Teens who loved Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2001) will cheer its equally riveting sequel The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. As in the first novel, four teen girls who have known each other since birth (their moms shared a pregnancy aerobics class) further forge their bond of friendship through a pair of thrift-store jeans that magically, impossibly, fits them all perfectly.

Like the summer before, Carmen, Bridget, Tibby, and Lena share their individual adventures with the Pants collective, creating an engaging, kaleidoscopic narrative of four voices. This summer, Tibby attends a film program in Virginia and Bridget (Bee), whose mother has died, impulsively jets off to Alabama to get reacquainted with her estranged grandmother. Lovely Lena tries to protect herself from the heartbreak of loving her long-distance Greek god boyfriend Kostos, and Carmen deals (poorly) with her mother dating again and having the nerve to borrow the Pants!

The Second Summer, while breezy and fun to read, deals seriously with love lost and found, death, and finding the courage to live honestly. The teens' lessons are often painful, but the Sisterhood prevails. Quotations from luminaries such as Charlie Brown ("Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love") to Nelson Mandela ("There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered") open each chapter and cleverly reflect the novel's many moods. (Ages 12 and older) --Karin Snelson --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up-Carmen, Lena, Tibby, and Bee are back in this long, engaging sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Delacorte, 2001). The four best friends are beginning their 16th summer with new expectations for personal growth, romance, and deepening friendship, all enhanced by the magic of a shared pair of thrift-store jeans. Brashares has deftly interwoven the story's strands to convey the relaxed intimacy of the girls' friendships as well as the many parallels in their individual experiences. The dialogue is natural and helps build nuances of character; the use of metaphor and insightful language renders a narrative that is highly readable and marked by emotional truth. Bee, whose mother died when she was 11, heads to Alabama under an assumed name to visit her estranged maternal grandmother. Carmen and Lena both become entangled in emotional spats with their mothers, and Tibby makes an edgy documentary film about her mother for a screenwriting course. This is a summer for coming-of-age, and for people materializing out of the blue, but making an impact-Tibby's old friend Brian appears unbidden at her dorm; Lena's Greek boyfriend, Kostos, arrives suddenly; and Carmen's stepsister comes seeking sanctuary. Meanwhile, the traveling pants are circulated among the friends. It may just be the power of wonder, but the jeans undoubtedly play a role in the happy resolution of this big-hearted, complex tale of living, learning, and caring. Brashares's novel can be enjoyed by readers who have not yet discovered the previous book. It is certain to delight those readers who have.
Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers; First Edition first Printing edition (April 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385729340
• ISBN-13: 978-0385729345
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (334 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #476,873 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 2 in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, June 15, 2003

By	Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood is an engaging, entertaining almost addictive novel that will appeal to young adults, as well as people who haven't seen young adulthood in a long time. I fall into the latter category and I must say, The Second Summer was a fun, delightful novel that I read in one sitting. You should probably read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants first because the stories from that novel continue on in this one. A note to parents--this novel is fairly clean--so if the younger crowd is interested, you should feel comfortable with them reading it. The novel focuses on mother (or mother-figure)-daughter relationships--the secrets mothers keep from the daughters and vice versa, the problems in those relationship, etc. The resolution of all these problems is all positive and believable. Enjoy this one.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the first!, April 27, 2003

By A Customer

This book was absolutely amazing! I loved the first one and couldn't wait to get this one; when it arrived in the mail I ripped open the box and read it straight through.
This book takes place the summer after the first one (hence the title). Although Lena, Carmen, Tibby, and Bridget will be spending some of their summer together, they lives end up taking completely different paths.
Bridget, who was originally supposed to stay home for the summer, decides to go to Alabama to see her grandmother Greta. She wants to find out about her mother, and she also wants to try to rediscover herself after feeling lost as a result of her experiences the previous summer.
Lena stays in Bethesda and gets a job, but feels unhappy and a little lost. When fate puts her and Kostos together again, Lena's emotional strength is tested in new ways.
Carmen finally has a chance at love with a cute boy, Porter, but she can't help feeling pushed aside by her mother. Carmen's mom has got a new boyfriend, David, and things are not going the way she wants them to at all. Will Carmen's bad side from last summer reappear?
Tibby goes to film camp where she has to make a film about someone who has played an important role in her life. Will she make a shallow film or will she face her problems and do something that she can be proud of?
For those Kostos lovers out there (myself included), everyone's favorite Greek hottie plays a big part this summer. Some old favorite characters are back, like Brian McBrian and Paul and Krista. There are also new people to love or hate, like Greta, Billy Kline, Alex and Maura, and David.
The author provides more insight into the Septembers' mothers' relationships with each other as well, and we learn more about everyone.
Reading this book is like getting reacquainted with old friends. These girls are not fictional characters, they are real people! If you loved Ann Brashares's first novel, then this second book will blow you away!

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must for Mothers and Daughters!, September 28, 2004

By	W. Carol "dog lover" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This enchanting sequel to "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" is every bit as charming, wonderful, sweet and brilliant (to this adult's eyes, anyway) as the first book...and has a theme so true and so wise and so non-preachy that I recommend it as must reading for all teenaged girls AND their moms.

The girls are now one year older, and, as readers of the first book well know, they have not come through the past year unscathed. They are still mourning a death (Tibby), still conflicted over too much too soon with a too-old guy (Bee), confused over love and longing in a foreign country (Lena) and grappling with an out-of-control temper (Carmen).

As the new summer begins, each of the girls has an issue with her mother (even Bee, whose mother is long dead), and these issues come bubbling to the surface unexpectedly and often cruelly. We get to see the age-old mother-daughter conflict from the teenaged point of view, and how refreshing, if not painful, it is for a mother of a 20-year-old to see just what she may have been thinking at 17! What I love most about the book(s) is that the girls are good, decent and wonderful people--with all the human frailities and faults. And their battles with their respective mothers are so true, so heart wrenching and yet so real, that the solutions to each of the battles wring entirely true.

I can't wait for the next book in this enchanting series. I know this is a set of books for adolescent girls, but Moms, I'm telling you, there's good reading in here for you too. Maybe more than our daughters will ever know.