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The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
by Ann Brashares
Book Reviewed by:It's been seven years since The
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants hit the book
shelves and became an almost immediate hit with teen
girls - with more than 7 million copies of the first
three books in print in
North America alone.
Brashares says that Forever in Blue, the
fourth book following
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,
Second Summer of the Sisterhood and
Girls in Pants, will
be the last in the series, ending with a plot
twist ensuring that it cannot be revived (although
she reassures her fans that "it's not like I kill
off any of the characters").
Once again Lena, Carmen, Bridget and Tibby go their
separate ways, held together by the magical pants
symbolic of their friendship.
Like the other volumes, Forever in Blue is
told in a third person voice that unites the
individual but interlinking stories. Issues of
concern to older teens such as sex and the fear of
pregnancy are explored with a light touch (even so,
Brashares suggests that her books are not suitable
for children under 12 years old), and there is a
thread of humor and poignancy that runs through the
book - which might be more apparent to an adult
reader somewhat distanced from the late-teen age
group than to the intended target audience.
The strength of this series is the inclusive nature
of the girls' friendship. All too often
close friendships among teenage girls seem to be based on
the formation of cliques that derive their power
from the fact that they are exclusive - girls can
belong to the clique only if they follow the rules,
which usually means not having (or admitting to
have) close friends that the clique have not
authorized. At the heart of the
Traveling Pants novels there is a firm and
lasting friendship between the four girls, but
instead of being limited by this friendship they are
empowered by it to expand their personal horizons.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in January 2007, and has been updated for the
May 2008 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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