Plot Summary

     The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares falls under the genre of contemporary realistic fiction.  This young adult novel tells the readers a story about four teenage girls that could very well happen to teenage girls in real life.  All of the characters portrayed seem real and as if their stories could really happen.  There is also a well-defined conflict between the girls and the pants and the magic the pants bring to them throughout the summer.  Each character is portrayed in their own way as well, creating each to have their own unique personality.  All of these elements help support that this novel is contemporary realistic fiction.

     The Second Summer of the Sisterhood is a sequel to the novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants also by Ann Brashares.  There are four girls who are the main characters in this novel who are, Lena, Tibby, Bridget (Bee), and Carmen.  In the first chapter it gives a brief summary of the first book saying that these four girls all went away last summer to places all over the world.  Before the girls left for their first summer away from one another, Carmen found a pair of pants that she was going to throw away, until they all tried these pants on and realized they all fit one another even though, “…the girls were all different sizes and shapes…”(Brashares 2).  These pants had a magic touch to them that would help keep Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen together all summer long.

      As a year went by, the second summer came and it was time once again for the girls to all go their separate ways, well kind of.  Lena and Carmen stayed back home to work.  Lena found a job at a local retail store and Carmen babysat for a family friend all summer long.  Tibby went to Williamston College for a summer program to work on her interest for making films.  Last but not least, Bridget went to Alabama to visit her grandmother, Greta.  Bridget had not seen her grandmother since around the time her mother committed suicide a few years back.  When Bridget learned that her father had been hiding letters from Greta she decided to pack up her things and go down south to pay a visit to her grandmother.  Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen all learned things this summer that would forever change their look on the future.

Textual Elements

     Ann Brashares has The Second Summer of the Sisterhood take place in different places since the girls are all in different areas.  The one common setting the book has for all four girls is that it takes place during the girls’ summer vacation.  Lena and Carmen stories take place in and around the Washington D.C. area.  Tibby’s adventures and story are take place at Williamston College in Massachusetts, but she does occasionally go back home to Washington D.C. to visit her family and best friends, Lena and Carmen.  Bridget starts out back home in Washington D.C. but eventually makes her way down south to a small town bed and breakfast in Alabama and then later to stay at Greta’s house, also in Alabama.  Brashares does a good job at describing the setting throughout the book, she always makes sure the reader knows what character she is talking about and where they are located throughout the events of the story.

     Each character, even the minor ones, has good characterization.  Brashares gives the characters credibility and their own personalities to help the reader distinguish between each girl and their stories.  Lena is a young girl, proud of her Greek heritage.  She remains quiet and shy at times, but is always there to support her family and friends.  Lena’s previous summer consisted of her falling in love in Greece with a man named, Kostos.  Once she came back to the United States when summer was over, she soon cut ties off with Kostos.  The whole year she has been a young teenage girl trying to avoid love and the affects it brings.  Similar to Lena, Carmen shares the shyness.  Brashares portrays her as a teenage girl who lacks self-confidence, even when she goes on her first date.  Tibby is the most outgoing and defiant of the girls, after having a previously rough summer she bounced back to escape her hometown to have some freedom and go to Williamston College this summer.  Bridget has always been known as the pretty one out of their group of best friends. She is an athlete, who loves soccer.  But from the previous summer to this one now, she quit soccer, became shier, and made a few appearance changes.  The narrator states, “ If a person hadn’t seen Bee in a year they might now have recognized her sitting there” (Brashares 11).  This goes to show that Bee had changed her ways and attempted to create a “new” person.

     It is hard to draw one specific theme from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood.   Ann Brashares does a good job at giving this book a wide variety of themes without over doing it.  The first theme that comes out of this book that is probably the most obvious is friendship.  The book’s main idea centralizes around this topic of friendship. It is said, “the word friends doesn’t seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other” (Brashares 4).  Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen have all been best friends since they were born.  These girls show the true meaning of friendship by sticking by each other’s sides through thick and thin.  Even though they are spending summers apart they still have the pants to tie their friendship together and help keep apart of everyone no matter where they journey too.

Artistic Elements 

If a Picture Book you also need to include this section, otherwise simply delete it. Strategically and accurately describes some or all of the following artistic elements (this is not an exhaustive list – feel free to expand this). Select and link and/or upload 1-2 illustrations to support analysis: 

1. Media and Technique
2. Style of Art
3. Composition
4. Placement on page of Illustrations
5. Line, shape, texture, color, and design
6. Use of Negative Space
7. Placement on page of Text
8. Text design
   1.      Cites references in proper MLA parenthetical style. 

Analysis and Critique

Numbered Points are elements that should be included in a complete book entry. 

1. Literary  and  artistic effectiveness
2. Author’s perspective, voice, and style
3. Social relevancy
4. Overt and/or hidden messages
5. Interpretation is primarily one’s own.
   1.      Cites any resources used in analysis in proper MLA parenthetically and lists them correctly in REFERENCES section. 

Citation

Brashares, Ann. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 2004. Print.

References

Will need to look up format for the type of source used.