Meeting Notes 1.28.2011

We finished reading The Kind of Friends We Used To Be today.  These are the thoughts of our group members:

• The book was awesome!
• We wish it had an epilogue; we are wondering what happened after the story ends!  Did Kate and Marylin became friends again and what happened with Marylin's parents after Christmas Eve.
• We like the fact that when Marylin was running for Student Government, it brought her and Kate closer together.
• We were happy when Marylin stood up to Maisie was being rude talking about Kate.
• On p. 150, Lorna talked about cooking and always making her lunches.  One of our group members identified with that character, since she loves cooking and would LOVE to get paid for making her family's meals!
• When Ruby Santiago made it sound like she didn't even know who Kate was, perhaps she was trying to act "cool" and protect her image.
• We loved the fact that Rhetta and Marylin got to be closer friends after Marylin spent the night.  We were nervous when Rhetta was doing her makeup, in case she didn't know what she was doing, but it turned out really well!
• We discussed who might want to be a cheerleader in middle school.  Some said they were interested, but they didn't want to be one of those "rude" cheerleaders like in our book.
• We talked about both Matthew and Benjamin from the story.  Matthew seems more Kate's style, since he was caught skipping school and making other bad choices.  Benjamin seems nice and down-to-earth, and he is not afraid to let things sound "wrong."  Marylin thinks he's easy to talk to.
• There are a lot of characters!  We are having a hard time remembering some of their names.
• Ending:  surprising, fabulous, great way to end the story, goes back and forth between each character, we're hoping Marylin's parents either get back together or are nicer to each other in the future; kind-of like Flipped, when it was going back and forth between two characters.

We will meet again on February 11th to discuss our new book!