{My Thoughts} – Once again Roscoe Riley is in timeout. This time it’s because he lied to his parents. He wanted to enter a dog trick contest to win a trophy and since his dog goofy didn’t know any tricks, he borrowed someone else’s dog.

He had told his parent that the owner of the dog really wanted his do in the contest. However, that wasn’t true. Eventually he came clean with his parents, but he still ended up in timeout.

I highly recommend this book for any child that is having a difficult time engaging in the book world. It has a nice lesson about following the rules and it has humor, which makes for a nice read. ( )

Annotation:
Roscoe is tired of being the only one in the family who hasn’t earned a trophy! Roscoe enters a friends dog for the pet competition and wins a trophy, but at what cost?

My Review
Roscoe’s little sister has yet won another trophy. Roscoe has no trophies and he’s sick of it! His dog Goofy is a good dog but cannot learn a trick for the upcoming pet competition. If Roscoe wins he will finally have a trophy, but Goofy is not cooperating. While Roscoe is playing outside with his friends, Emma and Gus, a new boy name Martin who has an amazing dog named Edward who can read!!! He doesn’t read real words, but if there are three words on the page, he barks three times, and if four, barks four times. Roscoe asks Martin if he can borrow Edward for the pet competition. Martin agrees if he can have the sweater that Roscoe’s grandmother knit him (which has bunnies, flowers, and baby ducks). Since Roscoe doesn’t like the sweater, he agrees to the trade. A trophy is won, but at what cost.

This is a cute story and told in a child’s voice which I appreciate. I look forward to reading more of Roscoe’s adventures.

Other Reviews:

I could only find one review of this book perhaps because its copyright date is 2008.
School Library Journal Review: The reviewer says that this series of book begin and end in the “time-out” chair. It also says that Roscoe is a “hyper, trouble-finding boy”. I didn’t get the impression that he was hyper, just very creative. The reviewer notes that the book is a fun read and a “Good choices for children transitioning from beginning readers to chapter books”. The review has a brief summary of the story and I would have thought the description of the humor in the story and a good transition from early readers to chapter book recommendation would be enough for me to find this series of books.