3 Willows: a new sisterhood grows by Ann Brashares
Random House Australia, 2009. ISBN 9781741664096
(Age : 12+) Ann Brashares follows her award winning series of The
sisterhood of the travelling pants with an entirely new sisterhood.
Polly, Jo and Ama became best friends on the first day of third grade,
but as time went by, the friendship fell away. On the last day of
school before their summer holidays, they are reunited for one
afternoon recapturing a glimpse of what they had let fall away. The
summer holidays before they start high school, they find themselves in
very different places. Polly is not a beautiful girl at all, her
mother, who insists on being called Dia, is an individual and artist
and detests models. Polly dreams of becoming a model, and she is
rewarded by a chance to show her wares in New York; a dream come true
or so she thought! Jo knows her parents will separate and wasn't at all
surprised or upset at the announcement, everything had changed after
her brother Finn died. This summer while she is staying at the beach
house, she finds herself a job, a boyfriend and a chance to be accepted
by the 'cool group', everything she had dreamed, or was it? Ama wanted
to follow in her sisters' footsteps and do well in their new country,
so she worked hard at school, she studied hard and was not in the least
athletically inclined - she loved the Library, not lakes and hills!
Then to her horror finds her self stuck in a hiking camp, with no
shampoo or hair straightener and a tent partner from hell, and the
possibility of an 'F' for her first high school grade, the
biggest nightmare ever!
As the story of the girls' summer holiday events unfolds, beneath its
surface we see another story. Each girl travels alone through the
struggles, hurdles, and hardship of the summer. Each one realizes that
the friends they had left behind were the very friends they most
desired. This journey takes the girls back to the strongest roots they
have.
This is a great tale of friendship, love, life, death, struggle pain,
endurance and sticking it out.
Margaret Unsworth