The Mouse and the Motorcycle

A young mouse named Ralph looked out of his mousehole in Room 215 of the Mountain View Inn. The new tenant of the room, a boy, was playing with a little motorcycle just the right size for a mouse. Ralph could hardly wait till the boy left the room. Hurriedly he scrambled up the telephone cord to the bedside table, where the motorcycle was parked. With growing excitement Ralph mounted the handsome machine and grasped its handgrips. Sud- denly the telephone rang, and the motor- cycle with its rider rolled off the table into the metal wastebasket. Ralph was sure he was doomed to be thrown out with the trash. Instead of meeting this inglorious fate, however, the mouse found an un- expected career—that of motorcyclist— opening up to him.

The subsequent friendship between Ralph and Keith, the owner of the motor- cycle,- is admittedly an unusual one. It is described with humor and aplomb by the incomparable Beverly Cleary, whose first excursion into fantasy is a real triumph in the world of children's books.