The Friends By Rosa Guy --------You might want to change the ending about how Rosa Guy did on the book, like using more descriptive words.

Phyllisia Cathy is a young girl that moved to Harlem, New York from the islands. Phyllisia is about twelve or thirteen years old, and she is growing up very fast. Ruby is Phyllisia's sister, and she is about fifteen or sixteen. All of Phyllisia's friends think that Ruby is gorgeous. Phyllisia doesn't really get along with Ruby very well. Ruby and Phyllisia don't fight, but if they did Phyllisia would probably come out on top.

Phyllisia is criticized by Calvin almost every day. Calvin is her father, and he tells her that she is ugly and that Ruby is pretty. Phyllisia acts like she doesn't care, but she really cares about her appearance. Ramona is a very quiet, young looking, and beautiful woman. She treats Phyllisia with respect, and she treats Ruby nice also. Ramona is Phyllisia's mother, and she is very sick. If Phyllisia had a favorite parent it would probably be her mother, because she hates Calvin. Overall I think Phyllisia loves both of her parents.

Like anyone else Phyllisia has friends, and she has some enemies. There is a scrawny girl at Phyllisia's school that is always trying to get Phyllisia's attention. Phyllisia is very annoyed by the holes in the back of the girl's stockings; sometimes she wishes she could buy some stockings for the girl. Edith Jackson is the scrawny girl that is always nice to Phyllisia, and Phyllisia doesn't really like her. In Phyllisia's apartment complex there is a little girl that lives nearby and Phyllisia would love to have her as a friend. The way Phyllisia sees Marian is pretty, short, and funny, so naturally she wanted to be Marian's friend. As you can see Phyllisia is pretty shallow when it comes to picking friends.

Even though it sounds like Phyllisia would have some friends, she doesn't yet. Big-breasted Buelah is trying to fight with Phyllisia, and Phyllisia is scared to death. Once in class Buelah put one hand over her eye and the other hand balled up in a fist. Buelah wanted to beat Phyllisia to a monkey-chasing pulp. When Phyllisia got to school and she was getting taunted she was wishing that Edith would have been at school that day. Phyllisia was hoping that she could make friends with Edith and then she would be fine.

After school Phyllisia tried to run home but a couple kids grabbed her and threw her in the middle of a circle formed by other students. In the islands nothing like this would ever happen, but she is in Harlem now. Out of the school came Buelah and marched right up to Phyllisia, then she just started hitting her in the head. Phyllisia got knocked to the ground and Buelah came after her, Phyllisia started butting Buelah and Buelah was startled and fell over. Phyllisia went over to Buelah and kicked her then she ran all the way home.

You would expect a parent to hold a child and tell them that they love them, but not Calvin. When he came in from work he didn't even notice Phyllisia it took the mother to say something about it. When he finally did notice he asked her, "Did you butt her? We Cathy's are good at butting, I thought you had a good head on your shoulders." Calvin didn't really care, but he told her this, "You know what you do next time, you put a brick in your backpack and take it to school. They know not to mess with you when you have brick!" Phyllisia liked that so when she went to bed that night she was plotting.

Phyllisia and Edith ended up being friends, I don't know if you should say best friends, but they were friends. They did everything together, Phyllisia and Edith went to a ten cent store and Phyllisia was thinking about buying stockings for Edith. Phyllisia went to go talk to Edith and when she did Phyllisia was horrified, Edith was stealing! Phyllisia stormed out of the store and Edith called after her, but Phyllisia just kept walking. Next thing Phyllisia remembered was she was looking up at about a hundred people at once, she was in a riot! Suddenly Phyllisia was off to the side standing up with Edith standing next to her. Edith said, "Girl you could've been killed, you have to stay out of the riots." Phyllisia felt in debt to Edith from that day on.

Phyllisia and her family aren't really the picture perfect family, but her family is descent. Eventually she starts to love Calvin too, but she doesn't really like Ruby. Now Phyllisia is taller than Ruby and she is more developed too. Calvin threatens to send Ruby and Phyllisia back to the islands, and Phyllisia wants to go at first but then changes her mind so that she could stay with Edith. I think the author Rosa Guy did a very good job on this book Friends.