The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants

Title: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants

Author: Ann Brashares

Publication date: 2001

Number of pages: 376

Genre: Young Adult fiction
Geographical Setting: Washington DC/Maryland, Greece, Baja California, Charleston, SC

Time Period: early 2000s

Series: yes, first of the series

Plot Summary: Four teen girls are all very different from one another. If their mothers had not taken aerobic classes together when they were pregnant, they probably wouldn’t be the best friends they are today. They are about to face their first summer apart from one another. They plan to write letters but most importantly to share the Pants. Carmen didn’t think much about this pair of cheap thrift store jeans she bought until she and each of her friends tried them on. “Magically,” they fit each of their very different body types beautifully. They make their pact to share the jeans equally all summer and to share the experiences they have wearing them. The beautiful Lena travels to Greece to spend the summer with her grandparents. Athletic Bridget is off to an elite soccer camp in Baja California. Hot-headed Carmen, whose parents are divorced, is visiting her dad in South Carolina and rebellious Tibby is staying home to work for minimum wage at Wallman’s and film her documentary.

Subject Headings: friendship, best friends, teen girls, first love, travel, cancer, childhood leukemia, divorce, coming of age, summer

Appeal: best friends coming of age together and through separate experiences, successful film adaptation in 2005, divorced parents, remarriage of parents and new stepfamily, characters display different “types” of teen girls for a wide range of readers to relate to—the misunderstood beauty, the jock, the artsy girl, the bi-racial teen of divorced parents with a Puerto Rican mother and father starting a new “All-American” family, first sexual experiences touched on but are not explicit, death of a young girl from leukemia, death of a parent by suicide

If you liked The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, you might enjoy: Susan McBride’s The Debs. Caroline B. Cooney’s Family Reunion. Rebecca Wells’ The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. More for male readers, Randy Powell’s Three Clams and an Oyster.