The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Rachel Beiermeister)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
By: Ann Brashares (294 Pgs.)
Published By: Delacorte Press
Book found in the library
The novel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is about four teenaged girls who base keeping their summer close together at heart through a pair of plain denim jeans. It was almost as if they were magic, fitting all four of the girls bodies; Carmen, Lena, Tibby, and Bridget, when these girls had very different body shapes. The girls are all leaving for summer, except for Tibby, who is an angry mess, so the girls vow to each other that where ever they go, so should the pants. They would send them off to each other after they got their time with it, and they even made some rules for them, such as “you must never wash, or double-cuff the pants”. The book reveals their times during the summer, each one got in some sort of a predicament. Lena feels uncomfortable in Greece, where she went, especially with her grand mother pressuring her to date Kostos, the man she wants her to marry. Tibby gets a job, but hates it and ends up making a reliable, younger friend who unfortunately ends up dying. Carmen gets to South Carolina to finally see her father, only to find out that she’s got a new soon-to-be step family, which devastates her. Bridget goes to a soccer camp, where she meets Eric, one of the coaches, who she ends up liking, and she does some stuff she regrets. When the girls end up getting together at the end, they all share their experiences with the pants.


The audience for this book would be teenage girls, because this is the kind of stuff we go through with our best friends.
The author’s writing style is playful, and real. One passage to describe her style is on page 7, “We’re the Septembers now. The real ones. We are everything to one another. We don’t need to say so, it’s just true. Sometimes it seems like we’re so close we form one single complete person rather than four separate ones.”
Three passages that really struck me are
“Carefully she dug under layers of clothes to find the pants. They felt a little heavier than they deserved. She held her breath as she unfolded them, letting loose a thousand wishes into the air.” Pg 50
I chose this passage because it’s the beginning of the pants life, which also resembles the beginning of their summers away without each other for the first time.
“Effie was fourteen, and she’d kissed many more boys then Lena had. Lena was supposed to be the pretty one, but Effie was always the one with the boyfriend. Effie would grow up to be the happy old woman with the big family, surrounded by people who loved her, and Lena would be the weird, scrawny maiden aunt who was invited over only because they felt sorry for her.” Pg 214
This passage struck me only because it shows how sisters can be so jealous of each other and think of the silliest things, yet it really does go through some girl’s heads.
“Still, the pants promised us there was time. Nothing would be lost. There was all year if we needed it.. We had all the way until next summer, when we would take out the Traveling Pants and, together or apart, begin again.
I chose this passage because it says that their memories will never be forgotten, they tell so many stories, yet there’s still so many more to come.
This book seemed so real, and I did relate to most of it, but i've never been in the situations they’ve been through. I’ve had my friends be there for me more times then I can count. This whole story spoke to me, most people take their friends for granted, but the lesson learned is friends will always be there for you, never let them go. I would recommend this book for any teen age girl.