Product Description FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. 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. Amazon.com Review “Pb-pb-b-b-b. Pb-pb-b-b-b.” With these magic vocables, Ralph the mouse revs up a dream come true–his very own motorcycle. Living in a knothole in a hotel room, young Ralph has seen plenty of families come and go, some more generous with their crumbs than others. But when young Keith and his parents check in to the hotel, Ralph gets his first chance to check out. He has always fantasized about venturing beyond the second floor, maybe even outside. Curiosity overcomes caution, and Ralph must have a go at Keith’s toy motorcycle. Soon, the headstrong mouse finds himself in a pickle, when all he wanted was to ride a motorcycle. Lucky for him, the boy understands how it is. When he discovers Ralph in his thwarted attempt to abscond with the toy bike, Keith generously encourages the rodent to ride. He even teaches him the simple trick of starting the motorcycle: “You have to make a noise… pb-pb-b-b-b.” The subsequent situations Ralph motors into require quick thinking and grownup-sized courage. The team of Beverly Cleary and Louis Darling has been a great favorite for decades, introducing young chapter readers to Ramona, Beezus, Henry, and of course Ralph the mouse. (Ages 8 and older) –Emilie Coulter From AudioFile Jaunty opening music sets the tone for the adventures of Ralph the mouse as he discovers the magical toy motorcycle belonging to a young guest at the hotel where Ralph lives. When Ralph takes a terrible fall–into the wastebasket–the boy, Keith, must rescue him. While it’s easy for a boy to help a mouse, later Ralph must brave the dangers of “the outside” and the dreaded “ground floor” in order to help his new friend. B.D. Wong narrates at a pace that allows listeners to appreciate how truly funny Cleary’s story is. The old inn is peopled with a several guests and a housekeeping staff, each of whom expresses a particular attitude toward mice in a unique voice. Especially distinctive are the voices of Ralph’s extended family, who certainly must have had ancestors in the Catskills of New York. R.H.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine– Copyright (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine Review One might know that if Beverly Cleary were to invent a mouse, it would be a down-to-earth, boyish mouse with a proclivity for getting into scrapes. A good story! (Chicago Tribune) About the Author Beverly Cleary was born in McMinnville, Oregon, and, until she was old enough to attend school, lived on a farm in Yamhill, a town so small it had no library. Her mother arranged with the State Library to have books sent to Yamhill and acted as librarian in a lodge room upstairs over a bank. There Mrs. Cleary learned to love books. When the family moved to Portland, where Mrs. Cleary attended grammar school and high school, she soon found herself in the low reading circle, an experience that has given her sympathy for the problems of struggling readers. By the third grade she had conquered reading and spent much of her childhood either with books or on her way to and from the public library. Before long her school librarian was suggesting that she should write for boys and girls when she grew up. The idea appealed to her, and she decided that someday she would write the books she longed to read but was unable to find on the library shelves, funny stories about her neighborhood and the sort of children she knew. After graduation from junior college in Ontario, California, and the University of California at Berkeley, Mrs. Cleary entered the School of Librarianship at the University of Washington, Seattle. There she specialized in library work with children. She was Children’s Librarian in Yakima, Washington, until she married Clarence Cleary and moved to California. The Clearys are the pa