Roscoe Riley Rules 1 – Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs

Katherine Applegate's Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs is a Roscoe Riley story for 6 year olds, told entirely from the time-out corner.

What happens

Roscoe is already in trouble when you meet him. He waves you over, warns you that the two of you will be here a while, and offers to explain how it happened. Kids have to follow so many rules, he says, and sometimes his brain forgets to remember them all.

So he starts at the beginning, which is that morning, at the junk drawer.

The junk drawer is Roscoe's favourite off-limits place. Like a pirate treasure chest, he says, only with no rubies. Today it holds keys, paper clips, a Slinky that will not slink any more and the head off his little sister's doll (he was playing brain surgeon, the patient died). It also holds the Super-Mega-Gonzo Glue, otherwise known in that house as don't-you-dare glue.

He puts it in the bag of art supplies for his teacher. It seems helpful at the time.

Ms Diz is brand new and Roscoe feels responsible for her. His class is singing a song about bees for the parents that afternoon, wearing head bobbles left over from a play about butterflies, so the headbands are stretched out and keep sliding off. The rhythm sticks become walrus teeth, then swords. The headteacher appears in the doorway wearing his I-really-mean-business face.

And then Roscoe overhears Ms Diz joking to another teacher that at this rate she will be looking for another job. He does not think it is a joke. He decides to save her.

You can see exactly where this is going, and that is most of the fun.

Reading it is like being talked at by an extremely cheerful six year old who is certain you are on his side. Chapters are tiny and some are only two or three lines. He interrupts himself constantly to tell you things you did not ask about, like how to wake your big brother with a juice box, or why dads are so sensitive about losing their hair. His mother spends most of the morning up on the roof retrieving a shoe.

Nothing in it needs flagging. Nobody gets hurt, nobody is cruel beyond the ordinary run of brotherly insults, and the worst outcome is a very sticky mess.

One small thing for a British reader. Roscoe is American, so he is in first grade, used to be a kindergartner, has Band-Aids on his elbows and blue M&M's in his lunchbox. A confident 6 year old will work it all out from context. It is just worth a word if yours is only just reading alone.

What to read next

He does it all again soon enough. In Never Swim in Applesauce, the class goes to an apple orchard to find out where food comes from, and Roscoe discovers that there is a rule about not jumping into a giant tub of applesauce.