The Kind of Friends We Used to Be by Frances O'Roark Dowell

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Recommended: character development introduction

The Kind of Friends We Used to Be
SOAPSTONE

*In The Kind of Friends We Used to Be, there are two main characters, Kate and Marylin, but I’m just going to do Marylin for the parts where information about only a single character is needed.

Characters
Marylin is a cheerleader who cares too much about makeup and her hair. “Marylin was now a middle-school cheerleader and cared too much about her hair… she was a big believer that life could be just the way it looked in girls’ magazines, where you and all your Best Friends Forever got together before school started and made crafty decorations for your lockers and traded fingernail polish tips... Marylin believed that life could be sparkly all the time... It just took a little extra work and some lip gloss, and life would be like a TV show everyone wanted to watch.” (pgs 3-4) Because Marylin is now a cheerleader, she believes that everything she does reflects who she is, so she has to be pink and sparkly and absolutely perfect all the time, or else people won’t like her. “‘Seventh grade is a time for, I don’t know, hanging out with your group of friends and getting ready for high school. It’s about finding your own personal style.’” (pg 22) She doesn’t like to color outside the lines; she wants to be exactly who you would think a cheerleader would be. Her personality is very preppy and girly, so she tends to talk a lot and be very enthusiastic and overly dramatic about things. But her main problem is she doesn’t know how to have a real friend. “What an interesting experience, she thought later… To have a conversation and feel okay about it afterward. Quite frankly, Marylin hadn’t known that was possible.” (pg 167) This happened after Marylin had been talking with Kate, who she used to b...

... middle of paper ...

...y are. Instead of just knowing that they have different interests, hobbies, and looks, you are also able to see how they both think and react to things. I think that this is helpful when you are reading, because you get to see details that you maybe didn’t catch or that weren’t there before, and it’s interesting to see the same thing from different points of view.

Order
Most of the events in The Kind of Friends We Used to Be happen in chronological order. Sometimes, though, an event will be written in Marylin’s point of view, and then the same event is repeated in Kate’s point of view. It’s nice to be able to see the same event from two different perspectives, because it gives you more details about the event, which helps you to have more understanding of the story. It also helps you to think more about what’s happening because you’re seeing it two different ways.

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