Runaway Ralph

Ralph S. Mouse has had enough. Life at the Mountain View Inn means an overprotective mother, a swarm of younger cousins forever pestering him for rides, and no chance at all of opening up the throttle on his beloved miniature motorcycle. So one night Ralph slips out and rides for the open road, imagining a life of speed and danger with nobody to answer to.

What he finds instead is Happy Acres Camp, and a world scaled entirely against him. There is Catso, the camp cat, who regards a mouse on a motorcycle as an opportunity. There is Sam the watchdog, and a gopher with no patience for visitors. And there is Garf — Garfield, a sullen, homesick boy who catches Ralph, takes away his motorcycle and shuts him in a cage with a relentlessly cheerful hamster called Chum.

Neither the boy nor the mouse is happy where he is, which turns out to be the beginning of something. When Garf is wrongly accused of stealing another camper's watch, Ralph is the only one who can clear him — and Garf is the only one who can get Ralph and his motorcycle back to the inn.

Published in 1970 and illustrated by Louis Darling in his last collaboration with Beverly Cleary, Runaway Ralph is the second of the three Ralph books, following The Mouse and the Motorcycle. It is a funny, warm adventure about wanting to leave, discovering what leaving actually costs, and learning that home and friendship are worth more than the open road.