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The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants) (Paperback)
by Ann Brashares
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Teens, Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 118.00
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¥ 98.00
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MSL Pointer Review:
With a bit of last summer’s sand in the pockets, the Traveling Pants and the Sisterhood that wears them embark on their 16th summer.
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Author: Ann Brashares
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition
Pub. in: December, 2004
ISBN: 0385731051
Pages: 416
Measurements: 8.2 x 4.8 x 1.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BC00338
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0385731058
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- Awards & Credential -
NOMINEE 2005 - Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award
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- MSL Picks -
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood is an engaging, entertaining almost addictive novel that will appeal to young adults, as well as people who haven't seen young adulthood in a long time. I fall into the latter category and I must say, The Second Summer was a fun, delightful novel that I read in one sitting. You should probably read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants first because the stories from that novel continue on in this one. A note to parents - this novel is fairly clean - so if the younger crowd is interested, you should feel comfortable with them reading it. The novel focuses on mother (or mother-figure)-daughter relationships--the secrets mothers keep from the daughters and vice versa, the problems in those relationship, etc. The resolution of all these problems is all positive and believable. Enjoy this one.
(From quoting Elizabeth Hendry, USA)
Target readers:
Young adults.
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A lover of travel and of pants, Ann Brashares lives in New York City with her husband and three children.
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From the Publisher
Gr. 8-12. The four friends of the delightful Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2001) are back for another summer of friendship, family, fun, and love with the magic pair of shopworn jeans. The pants travel with Bridget to Alabama, where she reestablishes a bond with her maternal grandmother; then they go with Tibby to a special summer program at Williamston College. The pants are with Lena at home during her on-again, off-again relationship with Kostos, and they are with Carmen as she tries to navigate her own and her mother's love lives. But this year the pants preside over a sadder, more tumultuous summer, as all four girls mature and realize that love and family are far more difficult to sustain than they had thought. Brashares has done an outstanding job of showing the four teens growing up and giving readers a happy, ultimately hopeful book, easy to read and gentle in its important lessons. Readers will want at least one more summer of the sisterhood of the traveling pants.
(MSL quote)
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Prologue
0nce there were four girls who shared a pair of pants. The girls were all different sizes and shapes, and yet the pants fit each of them.
You may think this is a suburban myth. But I know it's true, because I am one of them-one of the sisters of the Traveling Pants.
We discovered their magic last summer, purely by accident. The four of us were splitting up for the first time in our lives. Carmen had gotten them from a second-hand place without even bothering to try them on. She was going to throw them away, but by chance, Tibby spotted them. First Tibby tried them; then me, Lena; then Bridget; then Carmen.
By the time Carmen pulled them on, we knew something extraordinary was happening. If the same pants fit-and I mean really fit-the four of us, they, aren't ordinary. They don't belong completely to the' world of things you can see and touch. My sister, Effie, claims I don't believe in magic, and maybe I didn't then. But after the first summer of the Traveling Pants, I do.
The Traveling Pants are not only the most beautiful pair of jeans that ever existed, they are kind, comforting, and wise. And also they make you look really good.
We, the members of the Sisterhood, were friends before the Traveling Pants. We've known each other since before we were born. Our mothers were all in the same pregnancy aerobics class, all due in early September. I feel this explains something about us. We all have in common that we got bounced on our fetal heads too much.
We were all born within seventeen days of each other, first me, a little early, in the end of August, and last Carmen, a little late, in the middle of September. You know how people make a big deal about which twin was born three minutes before the other one? Like it matters? Well, we're like that. We draw great significance from the fact that I'm the oldest-the most mature, the most maternal -and Carmen is the baby.
Our mothers started out being close. We had a group play date running at least three days a week until we started kindergarten. They called themselves the Septembers and eventually passed that name down to us. Our mothers would gab in whoever's yard it was, drinking iced tea and eating cherry tomatoes. We would play and play and play and occasionally fight. Honestly, I remember my friends' mothers almost as well as my own from that time.
We four, the daughters, reminisce about it sometimes- we look back on that period as a golden age., Gradually, as we grew, our mothers' friendship disintegrated. Then Bee's mother died. A giant hole was left, and none of them knew how to bridge it. Or maybe they just didn't have the courage.
The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops. When Tibby sits next to me in the movies, she bangs her heel against my shin during the funny or scary parts. Usually I don't even notice until the bruise blooms the next day. In history class Carmen absently grabs the loose, pinchy skin at my elbow. Bee rests her chin on my shoulder when I'm trying to show her something on the computer, clacking her tee& together when I turn to explain something. We step on, each other's feet a lot. (And, okay, I do have large feet.)
Before the Traveling, Pants we didn't know how to e~, together when we were apart. We didn't realize that we, are bigger and stronger and longer than the time we spend together. We learned that the first summer.
And all year long-, we waited and wondered what the second summer would bring. We learned to drive. We tried to care about our schoolwork and our PSATs. Effie fell in love (several times), and I tried to fall out of it. Brian became a regular fixture at Tibby's house, and she, wanted to talk about Bailey less and less. Carmen and Paul evolved from stepsiblings to friends. We all kept ue nervous, loving eyes on Bee.
While we did our thing, the Pants lived quietly in the top of Carmen's closet. They were summer Pants -that's what we had all agreed on. We had always marked our lives by summers. Besides, with the no-washing rule, we didn't want to overuse them. But not a day of fall, winter, or spring went by when I didn't think about them, curled up in Carmen's closet, safely gathering their magic for when we needed them again.
This summer began differently than the last. Except for Tibby, who'd be going to her film program at a college in Virginia, we thought we'd be staying home. We were all excited to see how the Pants worked when they weren't traveling.
But Bee never met a plan she didn't like to change. So from the start, our summer did not go the way we expected.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-14 00:00>
This book was absolutely amazing! I loved the first one and couldn't wait to get this one; when it arrived in the mail I ripped open the box and read it straight through.
This book takes place the summer after the first one (hence the title). Although Lena, Carmen, Tibby, and Bridget will be spending some of their summer together, they lives end up taking completely different paths.
Bridget, who was originally supposed to stay home for the summer, decides to go to Alabama to see her grandmother Greta. She wants to find out about her mother, and she also wants to try to rediscover herself after feeling lost as a result of her experiences the previous summer.
Lena stays in Bethesda and gets a job, but feels unhappy and a little lost. When fate puts her and Kostos together again, Lena's emotional strength is tested in new ways.
Carmen finally has a chance at love with a cute boy, Porter, but she can't help feeling pushed aside by her mother. Carmen's mom has got a new boyfriend, David, and things are not going the way she wants them to at all. Will Carmen's bad side from last summer reappear?
Tibby goes to film camp where she has to make a film about someone who has played an important role in her life. Will she make a shallow film or will she face her problems and do something that she can be proud of?
For those Kostos lovers out there (myself included), everyone's favorite Greek hottie plays a big part this summer. Some old favorite characters are back, like Brian McBrian and Paul and Krista. There are also new people to love or hate, like Greta, Billy Kline, Alex and Maura, and David.
The author provides more insight into the Septembers' mothers' relationships with each other as well, and we learn more about everyone.
Reading this book is like getting reacquainted with old friends. These girls are not fictional characters, they are real people! If you loved Ann Brashares's first novel, then this second book will blow you away!
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Carolyn Rowe Hill , USA
<2007-02-14 00:00>
Three of the four Septembers have a really rough summer in this Second Summer of the Sisterhood. They have much to learn about what it means to be their respective mothers. The fourth embarks on an odyssey to find out more about who she is and who her deceased mother was as a person. She finds an endearing love in the grandmother she scarcely remembers. Once again, the pants travel back and forth among them, though I felt their significance less in this book than in the first one (and they must be getting really filthy, too).
Lena, Carmen and Tibby remain in Maryland, while Bridget goes to Alabama. She has had a difficult year after events last summer, and all are greatly concerned for her. She has put on weight, dyed her luscious blond hair brown and has retreated into a cocoon of emotional agony. The loss of her mother when she was eleven has cost her more than she can understand or realize. Bee's (Bridget's nickname) father is an emotional cripple, unable to ease the way for either of his children. Carmen's mother, Christina, has a new boyfriend. You can imagine what Carmen and her self-righteous temper can do with that! Tibby is attending a summer film class at a nearby university. She learns about true friendship, the hard way, of course. Young friend, Bailey, who died last summer, comes to her rescue, posthumously. Lena and Kostos... oh my, oh my.
These stories can be very helpful to teens, both boys and girls. While I find it hard to believe most teens are as disrespectful toward their mothers as these characters are... at least I don't remember it that way myself...there are wise lessons to be learned within the pages of the Sisterhood series. Ann Brashares writes beautifully, and the sayings at the beginning of each chapter add much to the book's interest and value. One of the most thought-provoking ones this time: Fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed. Think about it... hard.
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Kaplan (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-14 00:00>
This enchanting sequel to "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" is every bit as charming, wonderful, sweet and brilliant (to this adult's eyes, anyway) as the first book... and has a theme so true and so wise and so non-preachy that I recommend it as must reading for all teenaged girls AND their moms.
The girls are now one year older, and, as readers of the first book well know, they have not come through the past year unscathed. They are still mourning a death (Tibby), still conflicted over too much too soon with a too-old guy (Bee), confused over love and longing in a foreign country (Lena) and grappling with an out-of-control temper (Carmen).
As the new summer begins, each of the girls has an issue with her mother (even Bee, whose mother is long dead), and these issues come bubbling to the surface unexpectedly and often cruelly. We get to see the age-old mother-daughter conflict from the teenaged point of view, and how refreshing, if not painful, it is for a mother of a 20-year-old to see just what she may have been thinking at 17! What I love most about the book(s) is that the girls are good, decent and wonderful people--with all the human frailities and faults. And their battles with their respective mothers are so true, so heart wrenching and yet so real, that the solutions to each of the battles wring entirely true.
I can't wait for the next book in this enchanting series. I know this is a set of books for adolescent girls, but Moms, I'm telling you, there's good reading in here for you too. Maybe more than our daughters will ever know.
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Rausseo (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-14 00:00>
This excellent sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is as charming, sweet and brilliant as the first book. But, it's also more mature and deep and emotional, and we can only thank the author for taking the story a step further, transforming what was a little but honest story into one of the most engaging book series of this decade.
One year after their first summer apart, Lena, Tibby, Carmen and Bee are about to begin a new summer, but each girl is still bearing a different scar from their past actions. Now, as the summer begins, we see the girls confronting their past fears, and well as also some unresolved issues with their mothers. The book explores the emotions of these girls in such an honest way, it's impossible not to feel a little related with all of them.
The Second Summer...is a deeper book, maybe a little serious, but also more satisfying, because we see our girls mature and face their joys and tragedies in such an admirable way, one can't help but get involved emotionally in their lives. We care about these characters, their fates, we want them to know the real life and the sadness that sometimes comes with it, but we also want them to come out victorious in each one of their battles.
This is a book I recommend to daughters and mothers. It will help you understand each other more. It will work magic just as it did in the sisterhood's lives!
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