The Mouse and the Motorcycle

The Mouse and the Motorcycle, by Beverly Cleary and Tracy Dockray, starts off in an old run-down hotel in a small town in northern California. That’s where Keith and his mother and father have ended up after driving all the way from Colorado without stopping. The hotel isn’t very nice, but since it’s Fourth of July weekend, everything else is full.

Ms. Cleary chose the setting because it reminded her of her old mouse-infested apartment, where she lived when she was young. She wanted to write a realistic fantasy story about a boy and a mouse that didn’t seem like a fairy tale, and run-down apartments and hotels always have a lot of mice. She made the story seem even more realistic by starting the plot from the main characters’ personalities, not from magic. There are magic events in the book, but the magic starts happening later than it would in a fairy tale.

The main characters are Ralph and Keith. Keith is an 11-year old boy who likes to play with toy cars and loves mice. Ralph is an adventurous teenage mouse who lives with his mother inside a knothole in Room 215, Keith’s room. Ralph wants to go to the first floor to explore, but his mom won’t let him because she’s a worrywart. She’s always telling him stories about how his uncles and grandparents got killed by falling in trashcans and laundry baskets.

The story gets going the first evening in the hotel, while Keith is at dinner. Ralph sees Keith’s toy motorcycle on the dresser and wants to ride it, but doesn’t know how. When he tries to get on the bike, it tips over and falls into the wastebasket, taking him with it. Ralph is trapped. When Keith gets back from dinner he sees the motorcycle in the wastebasket and is surprised when he hears Ralph asking him to get him out.

Keith asks Ralph, “How can you talk?” The mouse says, “Anybody who loves motorcycles can talk.”

Keith teaches Ralph how to pretend to ride the motorcycle by getting on and saying, “Vroom, vroom”—and the motorcycle takes off. Keith tells Ralph he can borrow the motorcycle and ride all over the second floor as long as he asks permission first.

The story’s conflict takes place when Keith and his family go to a picnic, and Ralph wants to ride the bike without Keith’s permission. He has a lot of close calls, and ends up losing the motorcycle when he drives it into a pillowcase and can’t get it back out. The maid puts the pillowcase in the laundry.

When Keith comes back, Ralph feels too bad about losing the motorcycle to tell Keith what happened. Finally, when Keith gets sick with a high fever, Ralph confesses.

Then he gets a chance to help Keith when he hears Keith’s parents say they need aspirin, but the pharmacy is closed. He borrows Keith’s toy ambulance and drives it down the first floor to search the rooms for aspirin. He braves a lot of dangers, but he finally finds an aspirin, puts it in the ambulance, and gets it back upstairs to Keith.

Keith gets better, and at the end of the story the bellboy brings the motorcycle back. Ralph has learned the theme of the book; when you’re using other people’s things, you have to be responsible.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Apr 2006

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