The Mouse and the Motorcycle
1965 novel by Beverly Cleary
The Mouse and the Motorcycle is a children's novel written by Beverly Cleary, illustrated by Louis Darling and published in 1965. It is the first in a trilogy featuring Ralph S. Mouse, a house mouse who can speak to humans (though typically only children), goes on adventures riding his miniature motorcycle, and who longs for excitement and independence while living with his family in a run-down hotel.
The story and characters were inspired both by Cleary's son, who while recovering from a fever played with miniature cars and motorcycles, and by a neighbor who had shown Cleary a small mouse that had been trapped in a bucket.
The book was released as a selection of the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club (Intermediate Division) and won the William Allen White Children's Book Award in 1968. Cleary went on to write two more books featuring the Ralph S. Mouse character in the following decades, and a film adaptation of The Mouse and The Motorcycle was produced in 1986.
Plot summary
Ralph is a mouse who lives in the run-down Mountain View Inn, a battered resort hotel in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. Ralph longs for a life of danger and speed, wishing to get away from his relatives, who worry about the mice colony being discovered. One day a boy named Keith Gridley and his family visit the hotel on their way through California. Keith leaves a toy motorcycle on his bedside table. While Keith is away, Ralph attempts to ride it, but cannot figure out how to start it.
The public source identifies “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” as 1965 novel by Beverly Cleary. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mouse, Motorcycle and novel.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7752511. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1968 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.