The Kind of Friends We Used To Be
by Frances O’Roark Dowell

Awards and Nominations
Bank Street Best Books of the Year,
Bulletin Blue Ribbon,
CCBC Choices (Cooperative Children’s Book Council)

Description
Kate and Marylin are best friends forever….

Well, except for last year when they weren’t friends anymore….

And except for this year when they both want to be friends again, but just don’t know how.

But the thing is, even as they are trying to fix their broken friendship, they are becoming more and more unalike. And that’s becoming harder and harder to deal with. Well, it would be a lot easier if Kate would just take some of Marylin’s fashion advice. Ballet flats would look so much better than those big black combat boots. Feminine. But Kate doesn’t want to be feminine. She wants to learn guitar and write her own songs; she wants to be the exact opposite of the middle-school cheerleaders. And maybe if Marylin would just stick up for herself and not get bullied by Mazie (the Meanest Cheerleader Ever) into judging anyone who’s the least bit different, Marylin and Kate could be real friends again.

Funny, realistic, and incredibly insightful, Edgar Award-winning novelist Frances O’Roark Dowell explores the shifting terrain of middle-school friendship in the companion book to the well-loved The Secret Language of Girls. Read The Kind of Friends We Used To Be by Frances O’Roark Dowell.

Reviews of The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

The Washington Post
This touching sequel to The Secret Language of Girls alternates perspectives between Kate and Marylin. This allows for a nuanced portrait of an evolving friendship…By building sympathy for both characters, Frances O’Roark Dowell creates an emotionally complex story of girls going their separate ways but managing to reconnect, sometimes in a funny and poignant fashion.

Publishers Weekly
This sequel to Dowell’s The Secret Language of Girls follows Marylin and Kate as they start seventh grade on a tense note, having drifted from being BFFs to being neighbors who tiptoe around each other, unsure of what to say. The third-person perspective shifts between the two: Marylin learns that being a cheerleader means putting up with obnoxious snobs, and Kate develops an interest in songwriting. This even-handedness is both a strength and a weakness. Both girls are sympathetic but the constant switching back and forth between their various crises-Marylin’s parents’ divorce; Kate’s anxiety over a cute boy in her creative writing club-means neither girl’s story gets substantial treatment. It’s more a slice of middle school life, kept afloat by Dowell’s smart insights into the way the middle school mind works. The territory is familiar, but for girls on either end of a friendship whose contours keep changing, Dowell’s treatment will act as a balm. Ages 8-12. The Kind of Friends We Used To Be. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

School Library Journal
Grade 5–8—This insightful sequel to The Secret Language of Girls (S & S, 2004) stands alone, but readers will want to go back and find out more about these engaging characters. Kate and Marylin used to be best friends, but sixth grade changed things. Now, as seventh graders, they are trying to work their way back to the way things “used to be.” But it’s not so easy when they are so different; Kate’s new passion is the guitar—and her heavy black boots—while Marylin, a cheerleader, is determined to be feminine and popular at all costs. Alternating points of view make it easy for readers to relate to both girls as they navigate friendship, romance, and family relationships. Dowell gets middle-school dynamics exactly right, and while her empathetic portraits of Kate and Marylin are genuine and heartfelt, even secondary characters are memorable. A realistic and humorous look at the trials and tribulations of growing up and growing independent.—Laurie Slagenwhite, Baldwin Public Library, Birmingham, MI. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Booklist
Dowell’s The Secret Language of Girls (2005) traced the gradual unraveling of the friendship between two suburban sixth-grade girls. This sequel follows Kate and Marylin into seventh grade and shows the girls accepting both the distance between them and the comfort of having a trustworthy friend when you really need one. As in the last book, Kate is the more self-possessed one, though she is not without doubts or worries as she pursues her studies and songwriting. Marylin deals with divorced parents and cheerleading peer pressure but soon finds her own way in student government. Dowell’s light but observant style reveals the benefits of not judging anybody—including yourself—too quickly. Grades 4-7. –Abby Nolan