The Mouse and the Motorcycle

The Ralph S. Mouse middle-grade adventure series by beloved American children’s author Beverly Cleary includes The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965), Runaway Ralph (1970), and Ralph S. Mouse (1982). The series features the adventures of a talking mouse, Ralph, who lives in an old hotel, rides on a visiting boy’s toy motorcycle, and gets himself into big trouble. The books have a Lexile rating of 860L, suitable for middle-grade readers.

Louis Darling, an American illustrator and writer, worked with Cleary on a dozen novels, and he illustrated the original 1965 publication of The Mouse and the Motorcycle. The novel won the William Allen White Children’s Book Award and was adapted into a 1986 animated motion picture. During her long career, Cleary won a Newbery Medal, two Newbery Honors, and numerous other awards. The School Library Journal names three of Cleary’s novels, including The Mouse and the Motorcycle, as one of the 100 best books for children. Prior to penning the adventures of Ralph S. Mouse, Cleary received acclaim for her Henry Huggins series, first published in 1950, and her Ramona series, which debuted in 1955 with Beezus and Ramona.

This study guide cites the 2016 HarperCollins Publishers ebook.

Plot Summary

The story is set in the 1960s and takes place in California. A young mouse named Ralph lives in Mountain View Inn, an aging hotel in the foothills, where he observes the guests and eats the food crumbs they leave. Keith Gridley, a boy from Ohio who is visiting the hotel with his parents, brings a set of toy vehicles. He leaves them on the table in his hotel room. One is a tiny motorcycle, and Ralph sneaks into the room and tries to ride it but falls off the table and into a trash can. When Keith finds him there, they discover that they can talk to each other and share a mutual love of motorcycles.

Keith permits Ralph to ride on the toy motorcycle. The mouse learns that, if he makes a put-put sound, the toy will go, and he rides around on the carpet. Both he and Keith are delighted. Ralph talks Keith into letting him ride it in the hallway, where he enjoys a night of zooming around. A small dog barks at him, but he escapes. Ralph meets Matt the bellhop, an adult who also can chat with him.

In the morning, Ralph sneaks the motorcycle back into Keith’s room. The boy agrees to bring some cafeteria food for Ralph’s mouse family. While Ralph waits, the maid comes in, and Ralph nearly gets sucked into her vacuum cleaner. He escapes on the motorcycle but zooms into a pile of laundry. The maid unwittingly dumps Ralph into the hamper, and to escape, Ralph must abandon the motorcycle and chew his way out.

Ralph confesses his narrow escape to Keith. The boy is upset but decides that he, too, sometimes does reckless things. Ralph’s family learns that the hotel found the chewed-up hamper and plans to set out traps and poisons. Ralph reasons that if he and his family lay low and only eat the food brought by Keith, the hotel won’t catch any of them and will lose interest.

Keith returns from an outing not feeling well. Late at night, he develops a high fever. The night clerk can’t find any aspirin, and all the nearby stores are closed. If Keith is sick, Ralph’s family can’t eat, so Ralph decides to search for an aspirin pill. He visits all the upstairs rooms, looking for a dropped pill. A guest sees him and captures him in a drinking glass. She throws him out the window, but Ralph finds his way to the ground floor, where he finds an aspirin pill under a room dresser. He pushes it to the lobby, then goes upstairs and convinces Keith to loan him the toy ambulance.

Ralph drives the ambulance loudly past the room with the dog. The dog barks and wakes up his caretaker, who lugs him to the elevator on their way outside. Ralph drives the ambulance in with them and hides behind the man. On the ground floor, the mouse stashes the pill in the ambulance and drives back into the elevator. The dog’s owner notices a kid’s toy car on the floor, shrugs, and pushes the button for the second floor. They exit, and Ralph drives the ambulance to Keith’s room. He shoves the aspirin under the door and tells Keith his pill is ready.

The next morning, Keith feels much better. Matt brings Keith the toy motorcycle, which he found in the laundry. Matt knows about Ralph but won’t tell anyone. Keith invites Ralph to come with him to Ohio, but they realize that Ralph would have to live in a cage. Instead, Keith tells Ralph he can keep the motorcycle. Ralph is overjoyed, and he promises his mother that he’ll always drive it responsibly.