Ages 12 and up. Best buds Tibby, Carmen, Lena and Bridget are back with their magical pair of shared jeans in Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood. Each summer brings new and difficult challenges, as the perennially separated friends discover afresh this last season before college. Tibby struggles with the idea of close friend Brian becoming her boyfriend, and their fragile relationship is soon tested by a tragedy in her immediate family. Carmen doesn’t know how to react when she finds out that her middle-aged mom is pregnant, and Bridget is unpleasantly surprised to be reunited with the boy who broke her heart two summers ago. Finally, Lena, still coming to terms with the loss of her first love, tries to convince her strict father that art school is a better career path than Greek restaurant management. But through every crisis, each girl is assured of the love and support of the created sisterhood when she pulls on the denim armor of the cherished, and by now, a bit fragrant ("Rule # 1. You must never wash the Pants.") Traveling Pants.

Full of homey platitudes about life, love and the pursuit of perfect jeans, Girls in Pants occasionally reads like a lengthy Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul entry. But often that’s precisely the kind of friendly reassurance female readers are looking for, and fans of the wildly popular series who’ve journeyed every summer with the "Septembers" will find much to laugh and cry about in this concluding volume. --Jennifer Hubert

From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up - Four friends embark on their third summer of adventures, beginning with their high school graduation. Tibby ponders the change in her relationship with a male friend who now wants to date her. She is devastated when her little sister is seriously injured after falling out a window that Tibby accidentally left open. Lena's plans to attend art school are disrupted when her conservative father discovers her sketching a nude male model during a summer class and refuses to pay the tuition. Carmen takes a job looking after Lena's cantankerous grandmother. She decides to attend college locally when she discovers that her mother and new stepfather are expecting a baby. Bridget goes to summer camp and is surprised to learn that her ex-fling is also a counselor. As in the previous books, the pants move from girl to girl weaving their special magic, but they are mentioned only briefly and it is easy to forget who has them when. The multiple story lines abruptly switch within chapters, building suspense. However, reluctant readers may miss having more solid transitions. The novel will appeal to those wanting light fare as the girls spend most of their time fretting about boys and all of their tribulations end happily. Fans will clamor for the latest in the series. The story stands alone, but references to the previous summers will attract readers to the other books. - Linda L. Plevak, Saint Mary's Hall, San Antonio, TX Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gr. 8-12. It's the summer before the Septembers go to college, a summer in which old and new boyfriends appear, families grow and change, crises occur and are resolved, and the pants continue their designated rounds. Despite their diverse schedules, the four friends who appeared in the previous Traveling Pants books reunite one final weekend before they go off to four different colleges. Readers of the other books won't be disappointed with these new adventures: Carmen's mother is pregnant; Bee is back at soccer camp with her old crush, Eric; Tibby's sister falls from her second-story window; and Lena's parents refuse to pay for art school. Beneath these crisis-ridden plotlines lies an artist at work--an author who encourages her readers to look, feel, trust, and empathize with her characters. It's a strong ending to a series about four fully developed, strikingly different, equally fascinating teenage girls. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
The Pants first came to us at the perfect moment. That is, when we were splitting up for the first time. It was two summers ago when they first worked their magic, and last summer when they shook up our lives once again. You see, we don’t wear the Pants year-round. We let them rest so they are extra powerful when summer comes. (There was the time this spring when Carmen wore them to her mom’s wedding, but that was a special case.) Now we’re facing our last summer together. In September we go to college. And it’s not like one of those TV shows where all of us magically turn up at the same college. We’re going to four different colleges in four different cities (but all within four hours of one another—that was our one rule). We’re headed off to start our real lives. Tomorrow night at Gilda’s we’ll launch the Pants on their third summer voyage. Tomorrow begins the time of our lives. It’s when we’ll need our Pants the most.

From the Inside Flap
The Pants first came to us at the perfect moment. That is, when we were splitting up for the first time. It was two summers ago when they first worked their magic, and last summer when they shook up our lives once again. You see, we don’t wear the Pants year-round. We let them rest so they are extra powerful when summer comes. (There was the time this spring when Carmen wore them to her mom’s wedding, but that was a special case.)

Now we’re facing our last summer together. In September we go to college. And it’s not like one of those TV shows where all of us magically turn up at the same college. We’re going to four different colleges in four different cities (but all within four hours of one another—that was our one rule). We’re headed off to start our real lives.

Tomorrow night at Gilda’s we’ll launch the Pants on their third summer voyage. Tomorrow begins the time of our lives. It’s when we’ll need our Pants the most.

About the Author
A lover of travel and of pants, Ann Brashares lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Granted, Tibby was in a mood. All she could see was change. All anybody talked about was change. She didn’t like Bee’s wearing heels for the second day in a row. She felt peevish about Lena’s getting three inches trimmed off her hair. Couldn’t everybody just leave everything alone for a few minutes?
Tibby was a slow adjuster. In preschool, her teachers had said she had trouble with transitions. Tibby preferred looking backward for information rather than forward. As far as she was concerned, she’d take a nursery school report card over a fortune-teller any day of the week. It was the cheapest and best self-analysis around.
Tibby saw Gilda’s through these same eyes. It was changing. Its glory days of the late nineteen eighties were far behind it. It was showing its age. The once-shiny wood floor was scratched and dull. One of the mirror panels was cracked. The mats looked as old as Tibby, and they’d been cleaned much less. Gilda’s was trying to get with the times, offering kickboxing and yoga, according to the big chalkboard, but it didn’t look to Tibby like that was helping much. What if it went out of business? What a horrible thought. Maybe Tibby should buy a subscription of classes here? No, that would be weird, wouldn’t it?
“Tibby, you ready?” Lena was looking at her with concerned eyebrows.
“What if Gilda’s closes?” Tibby opened her mouth, and that was what came out.
Carmen, holding the Traveling Pants, Lena, lighting the candles, Bee, fussing with the dimmer switches near the door, all turned to her.
“Look at this place.” Tibby gestured around. “I mean, who comes here?”
Lena was puzzled. “I don’t know. Somebody. Women. Yoga people.”
“Yoga people?” Carmen asked.
“I don’t know,” Lena said again, laughing.
Tibby was the one most capable of emotional detachment, but tonight it all lay right on the surface. Her irrational thoughts about Gilda’s made her feel desperate, like its demise could swallow up their whole existence—like a change in the present could wipe out the past. The past felt fragile to her. But the past was set, right? It couldn’t be changed. Why did she feel such a need to protect it?
“I think it’s Pants time,” Carmen said. The snacks were out. The candles were lit. The egregiously bad dance music played.
Tibby wasn’t sure she wanted it to be Pants time yet. She was having enough trouble maintaining control. She was scared of them noticing what all this meant.
Too late. Out of Carmen’s arms came the artifacts of their ritual. The Pants, slowly unfolding from their winter compression, seeming to gain strength as they mixed with the special air of Gilda’s. Carmen laid them on the ground, and on top of them the manifesto, written on that first night two years before, describing the rules of wearing them. Silently they formed their circle, studying the inscriptions and embroidery that chronicled their summer lives.
“Tonight we say good-bye to high school, and bye to Bee for a while,” Carmen said in her ceremonial voice. “We say hello to summer, and hello to the Traveling Pants.”
Her voice grew less ceremonial. “Tonight we are not worrying about good-bye to each other. We’re saving that for the beach at the end of the summer. That’s the deal, right?”
Tibby felt like kissing Carmen. Brave as she was, even Carmen was daunted by the implications of looking ahead.
“That’s the deal,” Tibby agreed heartily.
The last weekend of the summer had already become sacred in their minds. Sacred and feared. The Morgans owned a house right on the beach in Rehoboth. They had offered it to Carmen for that final weekend, in part, Carmen suspected, because they had gotten an au pair from Denmark and felt guilty about not hiring Carmen to babysit this summer as she had done the summer before.
The four of them had promised each other in the spring that it would be their weekend. The four of them and nobody else. They all depended upon it. The future was unfurling fast, but whatever happened this summer, that weekend stood between them and the great unknown.
They all looked ahead to college in different ways, Tibby knew. They all had different amounts to lose. Bee, in her lonely house, had nothing. Carmen did; she dreaded saying good-bye to her mother. Tibby feared leaving the familiarity of her chaos. Lena flipped and flopped—one day she was afraid to cut ties, and the next she was dying to get away.
The thing they feared equally and powerfully was saying good-bye to one another.
After drawing for the Pants (Tibby won), reviewing the rules (unnecessary, but still part of tradition), and taking a brief hiatus to chew down some Gummi Worms, it was at last time for the vow. Like they had the summer before, they said it together.
“To honor the Pants and the Sisterhood
And this moment and this summer and the rest of our lives
Together and apart.”
Only this time, Tibby felt the tears fall when they said “the rest of our lives.” Because in the past that had always seemed like a distant road, and tonight, she knew in her heart, they were already on it.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Since publication of The Second Summer of the Sisterhood in 2003, readers have waited with bated breath for the third uplifting installment of Ann Brashares' blockbuster series. At last, the Traveling Pants are back! Filled with changes, surprises, and -- of course -- friendship, this appealing page-turner follows the four friends through the last eventful summer before they head off to college. Beginning with the ceremonial unfolding-of-the-Pants, Brashares dives headfirst into the complicated lives of the four girls: Carmen, who is now taking care of Lena's grandmother and dealing with a new development at home; Lena, whose plans for art school might be thwarted by her father; Bridget, who finds an unexpected surprise at the soccer camp where she is working; and insecure Tibby, who discovers in herself untapped reserves of strength. In this touching and heartfelt story, Brashares sends her likable characters off in several directions; but, as always, she ultimately brings them together in an affirmation of friendship. And, while it remains to be seen what further adventures await the girls as they leave for their different schools, one thing is sure: Fans of the Traveling Pants will continue to savor every twist and turn in this inspiring series. Shana Taylor

ANNOTATION

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants graduates from high school and spends their last summer before college learning about life and themselves.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

It's the summer before the sisterhood departs for college...their last real summer together before they head off to start their grown-up lives. It's the time when they need their Pants the most.

Tibby: Learns that the Pants have always known what she hasn't about Brian, and clings to them tightly -- while others around her leap headfirst.

Carmen: Needs all the Pants magic possible, now that she's agreed to watch Lena's cranky Greek grandmother for the entire summer. Not to mention that she's pretending to be someone she's not -- to someone who could really matter....

Lena: Wishes the Pants could tell her whether going to art school is the dream she should follow, even if it means her family won't support her.

Bridget: Is especially glad to have the Pants at soccer camp when she finds out who her fellow coach is.

In this breathtaking novel, which brims with sunshine and sorrow, courage and happiness, Ann Brashares takes readers on an amazing journey into a summer that will change everything for the girls and their cherished magical Pants.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Fans of the Traveling Pants series will be delighted to welcome back the four lifelong friends as they face their last summer together before separating for college. Though each girl has her own problems-and her own romance-to deal with, the quartet is there for each other, as are the magical pants that look good on them all (even if the pants themselves take a back seat in this installment). The author expertly splices together each friend's struggle with growing up: Bee's first love turns up as a fellow soccer coach at the summer camp where she is also coaching, Carmen's mother is expecting a new baby, Lena's father, as punishment for her sneaking off to an art class, will not pay for her education at Rhode Island art School of Design and Tibby is afraid when a longtime friendship turns into romance. Though readers new to the series may have trouble catching on to the back story, and a couple of plot points strain credibility (e.g., Tibby becomes Carmen's mother's last-minute labor coach), the girls are once again wonderfully drawn, with all their realistic faults. Readers will laugh as tough Carmen faces off with a police officer who stops her on her way to the hospital, and be touched when Lena draws a portrait of her recently widowed grandmother. Even in moments that edge toward melodrama (such as a parting shot of the four friends holding hands as they face the ocean surf), it's the girls' genuine love and tenderness that will win readers over and make them envious of the friends' strong bond. Ages 12-up. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT - Claire Rosser

Fans of this delightful series of books will eagerly grab this third part. (It has been announced that a movie will be made of this series and released in the summer of 2005, which will only encourage more readership.) To recap: it concerns four friends, four families, linked by a lifetime of memories and also by a magical pair of pants that brings out the best in the girl wearing them. This third summer of the sisterhood is the summer after graduation, before the friends—Tibby, Bee, Lena and Carmen—separate and go to college, so there is a bittersweet quality to the story. Each girl is a thoughtful, articulate, attractive person with her own set of talents and interests; connecting them all is the friendship they treasure. They may get their feelings hurt, they may stagger around in despair, they may be confused, they may be celebrating and happy—they are absolutely believable characters. As they pursue their activities this third summer, they frequently are in touch with one another, which is how the reader finds out what's going on in each life. It's best to start with the first book, but each book is equally enjoyable. KLIATT Codes: JS*—Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2005, Random House, Delacorte, 338p., Ages 12 to 18.

Kirkus Reviews