The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Common Sense Note
Elements of concern to parents (see Ratings), as well as an emotional subtext that won't make much sense to younger readers, mark this series as For Teens Only.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
There are few things teens love as much as melodrama, and they'll get plenty of it here: Tibby befriends a 12-year-old with leukemia, Carmen's father has a new family, Lena falls in love in Greece, and Bridget has her first sexual experience, which devastates her. But Brashares is simply a better writer than most of the authors of this kind of literature and, as her story flits back and forth among the girls, she builds a reservoir of affection for each character that makes the climax of each of their stories surprisingly effective.
Though their feelings and crises have a ring of truth to them, more than the Pants add an element of fantasy. The friendship among the four girls is the kind every teen (perhaps every person) longs for but never actually experiences -- rock solid and dependable, with no rivalries or pettiness to mar it, filled only with kindness, love, and understanding. But if this friendship, along with the girls' openness to the world and their capacity for honest self-appraisal and growth, gives teen readers something to which to aspire, then this book will deserve its popularity.
From the book:
When they were all gathered and Bridget stopped aerobicizing, Carmen began. "On the last night before the diaspora" -- she paused briefly so everyone could admire her use of the word -- "we discovered some magic." She felt an itchy tingle in the arches of her feet. "Magic comes in many forms. Tonight it comes to us in a pair of pants. I hereby propose that these pants belong to us equally, that they will travel to all the places we're going, and they will keep us together when we are apart."
Plot Summary:
Lena, Bridget, Tibby, and Carmen have been best friends since birth. Now, just before they are about to spend their first summer apart, they discover a pair of jeans that miraculously fits all of them, despite their differing physiques. And not just fit -- the Pants make each girl look, and feel, beautiful and confident. They don't know it yet, but they'll need that confidence during a summer that will test them, each in different ways.
That's all the magic, if such it is, that comes from the Pants themselves -- the rest comes from the powerful love these girls share, which travels with the pants. In a solemn midnight ceremony, the kind of solemnity of which perhaps only teenage girls are capable, they make up a compact about the Pants, part of which is that they will send them back and forth among themselves throughout the summer. Thus they will be present during each girl's time of crisis and tie the strands of the story together engagingly, if somewhat artificially.
Related Books:
Sequel
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
Teen Girl Friendship
The Friendship Ring series by Rachel Vail
| Content | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS | adults | kids | ||
Sexual ContentMuch kissing, an incorrect assumption of rape, skinnydipping, and Bridget throws herself at an older boy, with whom it is implied that she has sex. |
 |
 |
|
|
Violence |
|
|
|
|
LanguageA fair amount. |
|
|
|
|
Message |
|
|
|
|
Social BehaviorAll of the girls behave badly, and at times stupidly, and their parents are no better. |
 |
|
|
|
CommercialismA few obvious store name alterations. |
|
 |
|
|
Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoUnderage girls sneak out of camp to a bar, where counselors are drinking. |
|
|
|
|
