Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

by Ann Brashares

Assignment: #7 of narrative annotations
Publication info.: Delacorte, 2005. 352 p.
Genre & Format: Contemporary Fiction; Novel

Awards/Reviews: Everybody reviewed it.

Grades: 7 and up

Summary: It’s that summer after high school graduation before all four girls are ready to head off to four different colleges. Carmen looks after Lena’s grandmother while fretting over an impending baby sibling. Lena frets over paying for art school when her father finds her in a nude figure drawing class—and therefore refuses to pay for art school. Bee returns to her old soccer camp as a counselor, and surprise, Eric is there. No worries, Bee gained a whole new strength last summer. Which leaves Tibby to do her first dance with romance, and then must deal with her devastation after her baby sister falls out of an open window? The girls deal with old and new flames, as well as families and life decisions, all while wearing those ragged jeans they cherish.

Comments: I feel like I am growing weary with this foursome, but I still want to know what happens in the last book that finishes the set, so I guess I’ll read that this summer. Sometimes it gets tough keeping up with four storylines if you don’t read the book in big chunks, plus I become impatient that the romance doesn’t develop a bit faster since we’re hopping around. I enjoy bits of each character, but don’t really identify with any of them separately. Do you suppose that is on purpose?

Booktalking ideas: The book stands alone, but why wouldn’t you start with the first summer? Since all four have been released, I would booktalk the set, that way if some people forgot to look for the next one in their individual sequence, they can be reminded that all four are out there now. And if they have never met the traveling pants, what a great time to start—it’s almost summer.

VOYAesque Rating: 5Q 4P