BookBrowse Reviews Girls in Pants by Ann Brashares

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More From The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

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Comment: Brashares returns to the beloved characters she brought to life in her first novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, for a new installment that's equally authentic and engaging.

I'm a big fan of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series (even though I'm a couple of decades older than the intended target audience) and recommend the series to all teenage girls, and to many teenage boys (if they have the courage to read them!); but I also recommend the series to parents of teenage girls.  In our house, we're still in the pre-teen period that I believe marketing types like to call the 'tweens', but I'm already siphoning up information on teenagers, on the basis that the more I 'know' upfront the less likely it will be that I'll have to spend the next 10 years 'coping' with teenage children, and the more time we'll be able to spend enjoying each others company (dream on!).  Of course, there are endless books on every aspect of the teenage years and I have read only a tiny fraction of them.  However, what I have read reminds me of that old adage that the best way to learn is by doing. I can read endless books telling me how to be a good parent, but the beauty of reading good fiction is that you're not just reading about a situation but can actually experience what it is like to be that person - thus, I feel that reading the occasional book targeted at teens, about teens, will get me as close as I'm ever going to get to understanding the dynamics of teenagers (yes, you may laugh, but there's no harm trying!)

I've been holding off profiling this book (published in paperback in December) as I was hoping to bring you an excerpt of the third book which was published a few weeks ago, but unfortunately the publisher was unable to give BookBrowse permission to reprint an excerpt.  However, I can tell you that Girls in Pants is every bit as good as the first two!

This review first ran in the February 2, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.