3 Willows: a new sisterhood grows by Ann Brashares

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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

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