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Do you know what your teenage daughters are reading?
Date of Review: Feb 2, 2002
The Bottom Line: If your teenage daughters are reading this, you should be reading it too!
My daughter is eight and an advanced reader. I often find that she is reading books well ahead of what is considered "normal". As a parent, this presents an extra challenge, because I have to make sure that the books are appropriate for her intellectual and emotional level as well as her reading level.
Since September, I have been hearing lots of buzz about a book called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. On CBS's The Early Show, Peter Glassman, owner of the "Books of Wonder" children's bookstore, dubbed the book one of the ten best for teens in 2001. Amazon.com and BookWeb.org agree. It appeared on the New York Time's bestseller list for children for twelve weeks. It was also featured in Seventeen and Teen People and is all the talk on various web sites and message boards. Of course, the talk was rather general. "It's SO good!" "It's worth reading!" Such information never told me if it would be appropriate for my daughter. So I decided to check it out.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a story of four fifteen year old friends from Washington, DC. Their mothers had met during an aerobics class for pregnant women. Since the mothers were due at the same time, they formed a close bond. After Bridget, Carmen, Tibby, and Lena were born, the mothers drifted apart, but the girls remained friends. The plot focuses on their first summer apart, when the girls go off in different directions and, for the first time, have to deal with their problems without the immediate support of the others.
Carmen (Carma) is the narrator for the first chapter, where she introduces the reader to the girls, explains the origin of the Sisterhood. While the girls are shopping at a thrift store, Carmen finds "The Pants" and, on a whim, buys them for a whopping $3.49 without even trying them on. As the girls prepare to separate for the summer, they each decide to try them on. Miraculously, the pants fit each of the girls, even though their body types are as different as their personalities. The girls then decide that they must develop a "Sisterhood" where they will send the pants to each other over the summer and gather together at the end of the summer to exchange stories of what happened to them while wearing the pants. Carmen returns as the narrator in the last chapter and explains what they learned over that summer.
The remainder of the book is written in short passages and letters that the girls have written to each other. This presentation is ideal for showing the events are happening simultaneously and for slowly revealing each personality, but it sometimes also interrupts the flow and momentum of the story. The book is given a little additional character through the use of different typefaces for each of the girls' letters, and the chapters are interspersed with quotations from famous and not-so-famous people that relate to what the girls are experiencing.
In a Publisher's Weekly interview, Brashares said that she didn't want to create a book about teen issues but rather one about how teens dealt with those issues. In my opinion, she succeeded. The girls deal with quite a bit... boys, parents, other cultures, other generations, sex, depression, the after-effects of suicide, fatal illnesses, and death. One can't help but focus on the reactions of the girls or on how truly difficult it is to grow up in this modern world.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is one of the heaviest young adult books that I have ever read. I cried through the better part of the second half. I cringed through some of it. And I couldn't help but wondering if the book industry isn't training our daughters to become Oprah Book Club fans. To say this is a "teen angst" book doesn't seem to go quite far enough!
Most teen girls will likely identify with at least one of these girls. Most females will associate with at least one of the body images. Lena is beautiful and hates it, while Carmen is curvaceous and thinks that everything looks terrible on her, even if her friends don't agree. Almost everyone will identify with one of the personalities. Lena is quiet and artistic and, despite her beauty, incredibly insecure. Carmen is hot-tempered and sarcastic. Bridget is impetuous and uses her talents to show off in a desperate attempt to get attention. And Tibby is just hanging around on the edge, trying hard to be cool. Because they will so easily identify with the characters and situations, teenage girls are sure to like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
My impression of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is different than that of a teen, though. As I was reading the book, I envisioned my daughter in the positions of the girls in the book. And I shuddered. Being a teenager was no treat when I was there. I don't think I'm ready to see my daughter dealing with the realities of a world that is significantly more complex than ever before. I hurt... really hurt... for the girls in the book who were dealing with painful situations which they only slightly understood. It was impossible for me to not think of these girls from the perspective of a mother, which made the book more depressing for me than it might be for a teenage girl.
My perspective of a parent also left me appalled at some of the behavior of the girls. The girls had a yearly ritual of lying to their parents about where they were and breaking into the aerobics studio where their mothers met. There were numerous cases such as this where the girls acted irresponsibly but were not held accountable for their actions. The worst case was when one of the girls tells her younger sister to take the last leg of her flight home from New York alone because she is going to fly to Los Angeles to help a friend. She didn't even ask for permission from her parents or even let them know in advance that she was going first! I don't care how well intentioned her motives might be, my daughter would be in serious trouble for shirking her responsibility to her sibling (if she had one) and for going so far from home without my knowledge!
My final conclusion is that The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is far too "grown up" for my daughter. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it for any reader under the age of 13. Even then, I would highly suggest that a parent read it as well so that the situations and reactions can be discussed in more depth. For those who are looking for a lighter look at teenage angst, I highly recommend Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging instead.
