false
Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary, Louis Darling (Illustrator), Tracy Dockray (Illustrator)
BUY IT NEW
- $5.99 Online price$5.39 Member price(Save 10%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
- Add To List uiAction=GetAllLists&page=List&pageType=list&ean=9780380709243&productCode=BK&maxCount=100&threshold=3
DELIVERY & GIFT DETAILS:
Usually ships within 24 hours
Delivery Time and Shipping Rates
Eligible for gift wrap & gift message.
Reserve it at BN.com & pick it up in 60 minutes at your local store.
Enter a zip code
(Paperback - Reissue)
- Age Range: 8 to 12
- Pub. Date: September 1990
- 208pp
- Sales Rank: 2,078
| More Formats | |
|---|---|
| Available in eBook | $4.99 |
| Hardcover | $13.59 |
| Other Format | $14.15 |
| MP3 Book - Unabridged | $9.91 |
Buy it Used: 419 copies from $1.99 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Series: Cleary Reissue Series
- ISBN-13: 9780380709243
- ISBN: 0380709244
- Edition Description: Reissue
Synopsis
A reckless young mouse named Ralph makes friends with a boy in room 215 of the Mountain View Inn and discovers the joys of motorcycling.
Annotation
A reckless young mouse named Ralph makes friends with a boy in room 215 of the Mountain View Inn and discovers the joys of motorcycling.
Children's Literature
A reckless young mouse named Ralph makes friends with a boy in room 215 of the Mountain View Inn. Together they discover the joys of motorcycling. This story has been around for more than thirty years and has become a "classic" in children's literature. 1995 (orig.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
New readers find a friend in Beverly Cleary, who displays an uncanny understanding of kid life in Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Henry Huggins, and other titles in her classic series of books about life on Klickitat Street -- books that hold up decade after decade.
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 35Reviews: 26
- See All Reviews
A fun taleby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
July 19, 2009: My son and I are enjoying this exciting book. He is a rising 2nd grader. We are reading it together even though he can read it himself.
THE GOOD BOOKby sparky58
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
February 20, 2009: I chose this book because it looked like an interesting story to read. It was a fun book with lively characters. This book was a hit with my 3rd Grade class. We rated it 5 stars! Great characters...lots of adventure...appeals to a broad audience. In researching the author we learned an interesting fact that Beverly Cleary did not know how to read until she was in the 3rd grade. The main characters in this book are Ralph, a mouse, and Keith, a boy who stays in room 215 of the Mountain View Inn. Ralph learns that he can understand Keith and that Keith can understand him. Ralph learns how to ride a motorcycle that Keith has and Keith lets him ride it around at night. But Ralph does not know that he will end up on a mission to help the boy when he gets lost I like this book because it is a story that is great for many age levels. The story is also filled with adventure as Ralph gets himself into trouble time after time I would give this to any one in pre-k to middle school. This is a great book that I would recommend to many people. This book definitely deserves five stars!
Fact File
Name:
Beverly Cleary
Also Known As:
Beverly Atlee Bunn (birth name)
Current Home:
Carmel, California
Date of Birth:
April 12, 1916
Place of Birth:
McMinnville, Oregon
Education:
B.A., University of California-Berkeley, 1938; B.A. in librarianship, University of Washington (Seattle), 1939
Awards:
Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, 1975; Newbery Honor for Ramona and Her Father, 1978; Newbery Honor for Ramona Quimby, Age 8, 1982; Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw, 1984
Biography
Beverly Cleary was inadvertently doing market research for her books before she wrote them, as a young children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington. Cleary heard a lot about what kids were and weren’t responding to in literature, and she thought of her library patrons when she later sat down to write her first book.
Henry Huggins, published in 1950, was an effort to represent kids like the ones in Yakima and like the ones in her childhood neighborhood in Oregon. The bunch from Klickitat Street live in modest houses in a quiet neighborhood, but they’re busy: busy with rambunctious dogs (one Ribsy, to be precise), paper routes, robot building, school, bicycle acquisitions, and other projects. Cleary was particularly sensitive to the boys from her library days who complained that they could find nothing of interest to read – and Ralph and the Motorcycle was inspired by her son, who in fourth grade said he wanted to read about motorcycles. Fifteen years after her Henry books, Cleary would concoct the delightful story of a boy who teaches Ralph to ride his red toy motorcycle.
Cleary’s best known character, however, is a girl: Ramona Quimby, the sometimes difficult but always entertaining little sister whom Cleary follows from kindergarten to fourth grade in a series of books. Ramona is a Henry Huggins neighbor who, with her sister, got her first proper introduction in Beezus and Ramona, adding a dimension of sibling dynamics to the adventures on Klickitat Street. Cleary’s stories, so simple and so true, deftly portrayed the exasperation and exuberance of being a kid. Finally, an author seemed to understand perfectly about bossy/pesty siblings, unfair teachers, playmate politics, the joys of clubhouses and the perils of sub-mattress monsters.
Cleary is one of the rare children’s authors who has been able to engage both boys and girls on their own terms, mostly through either Henry Huggins or Ramona and Beezus. She has not limited herself to those characters, though. In 1983, she won the Newbery Medal with Dear Mr. Henshaw, the story of a boy coping with his parents’ divorce, as told through his journal entries and correspondence with his favorite author. She has also written a few books for older girls (Fifteen, The Luckiest Girl, Sister of the Bride, and Jean and Johnny) mostly focusing on first love and family relationships. A set of books for beginning readers stars four-year-old twins Jimmy and Janet.
Some of Cleary’s books – particularly her titles for young adults – may seem somewhat alien to kids whose daily lives don’t feature soda fountains, bottles of ink, or even learning cursive. Still, the author’s stories and characters stand the test of time; and she nails the basic concerns of childhood and adolescence. Her books (particularly the more modern Ramona series, which touches on the repercussions of a father’s job loss and a mother’s return to work) remain relevant classics.
Cleary has said in an essay that she wrote her two autobiographical books, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet, "because I wanted to tell young readers what life was like in safer, simpler, less-prosperous times, so different from today." She has conveyed that safer, simpler era -- still fraught with its own timeless concerns -- to children in her fiction as well, more than half a century after her first books were released.
Good to Know
Word processing is not Cleary's style. She writes, "I write in longhand on yellow legal pads. Some pages turn out right the first time (hooray!), some pages I revise once or twice and some I revise half-a-dozen times. I then attack my enemy the typewriter and produce a badly typed manuscript which I take to a typist whose fingers somehow hit the right keys. No, I do not use a computer. Everybody asks."
Cleary usually starts her books on January 2.
Up until she was six, Cleary lived in Yamhill, Oregon -- a town so small it had no library. Cleary's mother took up the job of librarian, asking for books to be sent from the state branch and lending them out from a lodge room over a bank. It was, Clearly remembers, "a dingy room filled with shabby leather-covered chairs and smelling of stale cigar smoke. The books were shelved in a donated china cabinet. It was there I made the most magical discovery: There were books written especially for children!"
Cleary authored a series of tie-in books in the early 1960s for classic TV show Leave It to Beaver.
Cleary's books appear in over 20 countries in 14 languages.
Cleary's book The Luckiest Girl is based in part on her own young adulthood, when a cousin of her mother's offered to take Beverly for the summer and have her attend Chaffey Junior College in Ontario, California. Cleary went from there to the University of California at Berkeley.
The actress Sarah Polley got her start playing Ramona in the late ‘80s TV series. Says Cleary in a Q & A on her web site: “I won’t let go of the rights for television productions unless I have script approval. There have been companies that have wanted the movie rights to Ramona, but they won’t let me have script approval, and so I say no. I did have script approval for the television productions of the Ramona series…. I thought Sarah Polley was a good little actress, a real little professional.”
Feature Interview
In the fall of 2002, Beverly Clearly answered some of our questions. What was the book that most influenced your life, and why?
The book that made the greatest impact on my life was The Dutch Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins. Let me explain. When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so. My despairing mother made sure that we had children’s books in our house. One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade and in the days before TV I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading and actually enjoying The Dutch Twins. I have been a reader ever since.
What are your ten favorite books, and why?
My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.
My other favorites at this time fall into categories. Novels by British writers are among my favorites because our family has enjoyed travel in England and because they are written with an economy of words as if they were written with a pen instead of a computer. Penelope Fitzgerald is a favorite. Recently I have read Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam and Atonement by Ian McEwan and have recommended them to others. I also enjoy autobiographies because I am curious about the lives of others as seen by themselves. This House of Sky and Heart Earth by Ivan Doig, memories of hardscrabble ranching, were both enjoyable and enlightening to read about. I wouldn’t care to live such a life myself.
Favorite films?
This is a tough one. In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships! In high school my favorite was It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Ah…romance. Then came Gone with the Wind, the original version, not the version shown on TV today which has cut most of the history of the South and left only the love story. A film we recently have seen twice is Mr. Holland’s Opus, a moving story of a composer’s struggle to reconcile his creativity with his family responsibilities, a familiar problem in our household. I also enjoyed it because it was filmed at my high school, U.S. Grant in Portland, Oregon.
Favorite music?
I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college. He held me close and sang in my ear in his beautiful tenor voice: “You’re as sweet as a red rose in June, dear…” Ah...youth.
If you had a book club, what would it be reading, and why?
My book club would read and discuss The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the great works of American fiction. I read it when I was about 12 years old and was so eager to find out what happened next that I am sure much of the novel’s meanings passed me by.
Who are your favorite writers, and what makes their writing special?
James Thurber is one of my favorites because of his wit and his view of American life. I have read all of the novels of Barbara Pym, tragic-comedies about women who live quiet English lives, the sort of women we have seen in villages when we have traveled in England. I always look forward to the next book by Anne Lamott who writes with self-mocking and brutal honesty about her own life in California. Although I do not read my own books, I have enjoyed writing them. Perhaps this makes me one of my favorite writers.
What else do you want your readers to know?
I like to read, walk, cook, and travel to cities. We live in the country so we miss museums and the bustle of city life. I also enjoy needlework of any kind and have made many of my own clothes and those of our children, knit sweaters for the whole family, designed and made needlepoint tapestries and pieced two quilts which now hang on the walls of our son’s home. At present our daughter-in-law and I are working on an embroidered wall hanging with a crazy-quilt background. When I am writing a book I also enjoy ironing, an idiosyncrasy that probably makes me sound more domestic than I really am. Working with my hands frees my imagination.
From the Publisher
"Boy!" said Ralph to himself, his whiskers quivering with excitement. "Boy, oh boy!" Feeling that this was an important moment in his life, he took hold of the handgrips. They felt good and solid beneath his paws. Yes, this motorcycle was a good machine all right.
Ralph the mouse ventures out from behind the piney knothole in the wall of his hotel-room home, scrambles up the telephone wire to the end table, and climbs aboard the toy motorcycle left there by a young guest. His thrill ride does not last long. The ringing telephone startles Ralph, and he and the motorcycle take a terrible fall - right to the bottom of a metal wastebasket. Luckily, Keith, the owner of the motorcycle, returns to find his toy. Keith rescues Ralph and teaches him how to ride the bike. Thus begins a great friendship and many awesome adventures. Once a mouse can ride a motorcyle ... almost anything can happen!
Children's Literature
A reckless young mouse named Ralph makes friends with a boy in room 215 of the Mountain View Inn. Together they discover the joys of motorcycling. This story has been around for more than thirty years and has become a "classic" in children's literature. 1995 (orig.
Loading...Product Details
- Series: Cleary Reissue Series
- ISBN-13: 9780380709243
- ISBN: 0380709244
- Edition Description: Reissue
Read an Excerpt
Mouse and the Motorcycle, The AER
Chapter One
The New Guests
Keith, the boy in the rumpled shorts and shirt, did not know he was being watched as he entered room 215 of the Mountain View Inn. Neither did his mother and father, who both looked hot and tired. They had come from Ohio and for five days had driven across plains and deserts and over mountains to the old hotel in the California foothills twenty-five miles from Highway 40.
The fourth person entering room 215 may have known he was being watched, but he did not care. He was Matt, sixty if he was a day, who at the moment was the bellboy. Matt also replaced wornout light bulbs, renewed washers in leaky faucets, carried trays for people who telephoned room service to order food sent to their rooms, and sometimes prevented children from hitting one another with croquet mallets on the lawn behind the hotel.
Now Matt's right shoulder sagged with the weight of one of the bags he was carrying. "Here you are, Mr. Gridley. Rooms 215 and 216," he said, setting the smaller of the bags on a luggage rack at the foot of the double bed before be opened a door into the next room. I expect you and Mrs. Gridley will want room 216. It is a comer room with twin beds and a private bath." He carried the heavy bag into the next room where he could be heard opening windows. Outside a chipmunk chattered in a pine tree and a chickadee whistled fee-bee-bee.
The boy's mother looked critically around room 215 and whispered, I think we should drive back to the main highway. There must be a motel with a Vacancy sign someplace. We didn't look long enough. "
"Not another mile" answered thefather. "I'm not driving another mile on a California highway on a holiday weekend. Did you see the way that truck almost forced us off the road?"
"Dad, did you see those two fellows on motorcycles-" began the boy and stopped, realizing he should not interrupt an argument.
" But this place is so old," protested the boys mother. "And we have only three weeks for our whole trip. We had planned to spend the Fourth of July weekend in San Francisco and we wanted to show Keith as much of the United States as we could."
San Francisco will have to wait and this is part of the United States. Besides, this used to be a very fashionable hotel," said Mr. Gridley. "People came from miles around."
"Fifty years ago," said Mrs. Gridley. "And they came by horse and buggy."
The bellboy returned to room 215. "The dining room opens at six-thirty, sir. There is ping-pong in the game room, TV in the lobby, and croquet on the back lawn. I'm sure you will be very comfortable." Matt, who had seen guests come and go for many years, knew there were two kinds-those who thought the hotel was a dreadful old barn of a place and those who thought it charming and quaint, so quiet and restful.
" Of course we will be comfortable," said Mr. Gridley, dropping some coins into Matt's hand for carrying the bags.
"But this big old hotel is positively spooky." Mrs. Gridley made one last protest. "It is probably full Of mice."
Matt opened the window wide. "Mice? Oh no, ma I am. The management wouldn't stand for mice.
"I wouldn't mind a few mice," the boy said, as he looked around the room at the high ceiling, the knotty pine walls, the carpet so threadbare that many of its roses had almost entirely faded, the one chair with the antimacassar on its back, the washbasin and towel racks in the comer of the room. "I like it here," he announced.. "A whole room to myself. Usually I just get a cot in the comer of a motel room."
His mother smiled, relenting. Then she turned to Matt."I'm sorry. It's just that it was so hot crossing Nevada and we are not used to mountain driving. Back on the highway the traffic was bumper to bumper. I'm sure we shall be very comfortable."
After Matt bad gone, closing the door behind him, Mr. Gridley said, I need a rest before dinner. Four hundred miles of driving and that mountain traffic! It was too much."
"And if we are going to stay for a weekend I had better unpack," said Mrs. Gridley. "At least I'll have a chance to do some drip-drying"
.Alone in room 215 and unaware that he was being watched, the boy began to explore. He got down on his hands and knees and looked under the bed. He leaned out the open window as far as he could and greedily inhaled deep breaths of pine-scented air. He turned the hot and cold water on and off in the washbasin and slipped one of the small bars of paper-wrapped soap into his pocket. Under the window he discovered a knothole in the pine wall down by the floor and squatting, poked his finger into the hole. When he felt nothing inside he lost interest.
Next Keith opened his suitcase and took out an apple and several small cars-a sedan, a sports car, and an ambulance about six inches long, and a red motorcycle half the length of the cars-which he dropped on the striped bedspread before he bit into the apple. He ate the apple noisily in big chomping bites, and then laid the core on the bedside table between the lamp and the telephone.
Keith began to play, running his cars up and down the bedspread, pretending that the stripes on the spread were highways and making noises with his mouth-vroom vroom for the sports car, wh-e-e wh-e-e for the ambulance and pb-pb-b-b-b for the motorcycle, up and down the stripes.
Once Keith stopped suddenly and looked quickly around the room as is he expected to see something or someone but hwne he saw nothing unusual he returned to his cars. Vroom, vroom. Bang! Crash! The Sports car hit the sedan and rolled off the highway stripe. Pb-pb-b-b-b-. The motorcycle came roaring tot he scene of the crash.
"Keith," his mother called from the next room.
"Time to get washed for dinner."
"O.K." Keith parked his cars in a striaght line on the bedside table beside the telephone where they looked like a row of real cars only much, much smaller.
The first thing Mrs. Gridley noticed when she and Mr. Gridley came into the room was the apple core on the table. She dropped it with a thunk into the metal wastebasket beside the table as she gave several quick little sniffs of the air and said, looking perplexed, I don't care what the bellboy said. I'm sure this hotel has mice."
I hope so," muttered Keith.
Mouse and the Motorcycle, The AER. Copyright © by Beverly Cleary. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Read a Sample Chapter
The Mouse and the MotorcycleChapter One
The New Guests
Keith, the boy in the rumpled shorts and shirt, did not know he was being watched as he entered room 215 of the Mountain View Inn. Neither did his mother and father, who both looked hot and tired. They had come from Ohio and for five days had driven across plains and deserts and over mountains to the old hotel in the California foothills twenty-five miles from Highway 40.
The fourth person entering room 215 may have known he was being watched, but he did not care. He was Matt, sixty if he was a day, who at the moment was the bellboy. Matt also replaced wornout light bulbs, renewed washers in leaky faucets, carried trays for people who telephoned room service to order food sent to their rooms, and sometimes prevented children from hitting one another with croquet mallets on the lawn behind the hotel.
Now Matt's right shoulder sagged with the weight of one of the bags he was carrying. "Here you are, Mr. Gridley. Rooms 215 and 216," he said, setting the smaller of the bags on a luggage rack at the foot of the double bed before be opened a door into the next room. I expect you and Mrs. Gridley will want room 216. It is a comer room with twin beds and a private bath." He carried the heavy bag into the next room where he could be heard opening windows. Outside a chipmunk chattered in a pine tree and a chickadee whistled fee-bee-bee.
The boy's mother looked critically around room 215 and whispered, I think we should drive back to the main highway. There must be a motel with a Vacancy sign someplace. We didn't look long enough."
"Not another mile" answered the father. "I'm not driving another mile on a California highway on a holiday weekend. Did you see the way that truck almost forced us off the road?"
"Dad, did you see those two fellows on motorcycles-" began the boy and stopped, realizing he should not interrupt an argument.
" But this place is so old," protested the boys mother. "And we have only three weeks for our whole trip. We had planned to spend the Fourth of July weekend in San Francisco and we wanted to show Keith as much of the United States as we could."
San Francisco will have to wait and this is part of the United States. Besides, this used to be a very fashionable hotel," said Mr. Gridley. "People came from miles around."
"Fifty years ago," said Mrs. Gridley. "And they came by horse and buggy."
The bellboy returned to room 215. "The dining room opens at six-thirty, sir. There is ping-pong in the game room, TV in the lobby, and croquet on the back lawn. I'm sure you will be very comfortable." Matt, who had seen guests come and go for many years, knew there were two kinds-those who thought the hotel was a dreadful old barn of a place and those who thought it charming and quaint, so quiet and restful.
" Of course we will be comfortable," said Mr. Gridley, dropping some coins into Matt's hand for carrying the bags.
"But this big old hotel is positively spooky." Mrs. Gridley made one last protest. "It is probably full Of mice."
Matt opened the window wide. "Mice? Oh no, ma I am. The management wouldn't stand for mice.
"I wouldn't mind a few mice," the boy said, as he looked around the room at the high ceiling, the knotty pine walls, the carpet so threadbare that many of its roses had almost entirely faded, the one chair with the antimacassar on its back, the washbasin and towel racks in the comer of the room. "I like it here," he announced.. "A whole room to myself. Usually I just get a cot in the comer of a motel room."
His mother smiled, relenting. Then she turned to Matt."I'm sorry. It's just that it was so hot crossing Nevada and we are not used to mountain driving. Back on the highway the traffic was bumper to bumper. I'm sure we shall be very comfortable."
After Matt bad gone, closing the door behind him, Mr. Gridley said, I need a rest before dinner. Four hundred miles of driving and that mountain traffic! It was too much."
"And if we are going to stay for a weekend I had better unpack," said Mrs. Gridley. "At least I'll have a chance to do some drip-drying"
.Alone in room 215 and unaware that he was being watched, the boy began to explore. He got down on his hands and knees and looked under the bed. He leaned out the open window as far as he could and greedily inhaled deep breaths of pine-scented air. He turned the hot and cold water on and off in the washbasin and slipped one of the small bars of paper-wrapped soap into his pocket. Under the window he discovered a knothole in the pine wall down by the floor and squatting, poked his finger into the hole. When he felt nothing inside he lost interest.
Next Keith opened his suitcase and took out an apple and several small cars-a sedan, a sports car, and an ambulance about six inches long, and a red motorcycle half the length of the cars-which he dropped on the striped bedspread before he bit into the apple. He ate the apple noisily in big chomping bites, and then laid the core on the bedside table between the lamp and the telephone.
Keith began to play, running his cars up and down the bedspread, pretending that the stripes on the spread were highways and making noises with his mouth-vroom vroom for the sports car, wh-e-e wh-e-e for the ambulance and pb-pb-b-b-b for the motorcycle, up and down the stripes.
Once Keith stopped suddenly and looked quickly around the room as is he expected to see something or someone but hwne he saw nothing unusual he returned to his cars. Vroom, vroom. Bang! Crash! The Sports car hit the sedan and rolled off the highway stripe. Pb-pb-b-b-b-. The motorcycle came roaring tot he scene of the crash.
"Keith," his mother called from the next room.
"Time to get washed for dinner."
"O.K." Keith parked his cars in a striaght line on the bedside table beside the telephone where they looked like a row of real cars only much, much smaller.
The first thing Mrs. Gridley noticed when she and Mr. Gridley came into the room was the apple core on the table. She dropped it with a thunk into the metal wastebasket beside the table as she gave several quick little sniffs of the air and said, looking perplexed, I don't care what the bellboy said. I'm sure this hotel has mice."
I hope so," muttered Keith.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle. Copyright © by Beverly Cleary. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. loading...
Related EssentiaListsuiAction=GetRelatedListsByEanFromProductPage&page=List&pageType=list&ean=9780380709243&productCode=BK&maxCount=5&threshold=10
loading...
Fans of this BookuiAction=GetProfileBlurbsWithEANinFavorites&page=UserProfile&pageType=profile&eanInput=9780380709243
loading...