Paperspine Blog

This book would have been a perfect summertime read. (But it IS summer, you say. Not if you live in Seattle, it isn’t. It’s still "grey season".) Alas, I had know way of knowing this ahead of time. No matter. It was still a pretty good book.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Anne Brashares, is all about the summertime adventures of Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena. It was Carmen who bought the jeans (from a thrift store, for only $3.49), but it was Tibby who first tried them on. All four of the girls then take turns trying them on and these pants amazingly fit all four, though they all have extremely different body types.

This is the first summer that the four girls will be spending apart. Tibby will be staying at home. Carmen is going to stay with her. Bridget is going to soccer camp. Lena is going with her sister to stay at their grandparent’s house – in Greece. The four girls decide that they’re going to share the pants over the course of the summer.

Throughout the summer, all four of the girls have experiences that help them grow – some in heartbreaking ways. Carmen’s perfect summer with her father turns out to be not-so-perfect. Tibby is stuck working at Wallman’s for the summer. Lena has a misunderstanding with a boy that colors the rest of the summer (not to mention the fact that her grandfather doesn’t speak any English!). Bridget falls for an older guy at her camp.

I definitely think it was geared towards a "mid-teen" (14-15 or so), but I still enjoyed it a lot. (Now, if only I had a pair of jeans that were that amazing…)