The ESCAPE ESCAPE MOUSE GREAT
FROM NO.1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR
JAMES PATTERSON AND
CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
ILLUSTRATED BY JENNIFER L. MEYER
The GREAT MOUSE ESCAPE
James Patterson is the internationally bestselling author of the highly praised Middle School books, Katt vs. Dogg, Ali Cross and the I Funny, Jacky Ha-Ha, Treasure Hunters, Dog Diaries and Max Einstein series. James Patterson’s books have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide, making him one of the biggest-selling authors of all time. He lives in Florida.
Chris Grabenstein is a New York Times bestselling author who has collaborated with James Patterson on the I Funny, Jacky Ha-Ha, Treasure Hunters, and House of Robots series, as well as Word of Mouse, Katt vs. Dogg, Pottymouth and Stoopid, Laugh Out Loud, and Daniel X: Armageddon. He lives in New York City.
Jennifer L. Meyer is an award-winning artist whose work has been featured in more than twenty books, including Star Wars Adventures: Chewbacca; If I Could Give You Christmas by Lynn Plourde; multiple books in the Calpurnia Tate, Girl Vet series by Jacqueline Kelly; and Lily to the Rescue by W. Bruce Cameron. She lives in the Southern US, where bunnies occasionally stop by to say hi to her and her fish. She invites you to visit her online at jennifer-meyer.com.
A list of titles by James Patterson appears at the back of this book
The GREAT MOUSE ESCAPE
A Word of Mouse Tale Tail
JAMES PATTERSON AND CHRIS GRABENSTEIN
ILLUSTRATED BY JENNIFER L. MEYER
YOUNG ARROW
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa
Young Arrow is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Penguin Random House UK, One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW11 7BW penguin.co.uk
First published 2025 001
Copyright © James Patterson, 2025
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes freedom of expression and supports a vibrant culture. Thank you for purchasing an authorised edition of this book and for respecting intellectual property laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it by any means without permission. You are supporting authors and enabling Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for everyone. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.
Illustrations by Jennifer L. Meyer
Interior design by Neil Swaab
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
The authorised representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–52912–053–0
Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
To J.J. —CG
The GREAT MOUSE ESCAPE
A Word of Mouse Tale Tail
TCHAPTER 1
he windowless black van crept to a stop in front of the tidy suburban home.
“This is it,” said the driver.
“We need to be one hundred percent certain,” said the spotter in the passenger seat. She had a highpowered scope pressed against one eye.
“It’s her house,” said the driver. “Nicest one on the block. A regular McMansion. I’ve been here before. Lots of times.”
“Still, we need on-site verification of the targets,” said the woman with the spyglass. She was the one in charge of this mission. Dr. Debbie was counting on her. “Roll the video.”
The driver tapped the vehicle’s touch screen command console. A YouTube video started streaming.
When it did, the three brightly colored cats in the rear of the van grumbled up a low yowl.
“That’s her at the church,” said the driver. “The white-haired girl with the freaky eyes. The two mice are with her. Blue 97 and the mystery rodent. I can’t believe little boy blue sang like that. In public.”
“Yes,” said the spotter. “He was genetically engineered to be much smarter.”
The spotter in the passenger seat swiveled sideways, raised her spyglass to her eye, and zoomed in on the scene framed by the stately home’s living room window.
“That’s her, all right,” she confirmed. “At the piano. Hailey Clarke, age twelve. White hair. White eyelashes. Icy-blue eyes.”
“What about the mice?” asked the driver.
The spotter nodded. “I see them both. Blue 97 and the other one. The brown female with the long, curly eyelashes.”
“How come that brown one wasn’t singing at the church?”
The spotter grinned. “Maybe she knew better. Maybe she’s even smarter than all the other mice created by the Lamina Lab before it was shut down. Maybe she’s the most intelligent mouse of all. Why else would Dr. Debbie be so interested in her?”
The cats in the back of the van hissed. They weren’t fond of mice, except as bite-sized snacks. The driver glanced up at his rearview mirror.
One cat was bright orange. Another was as yellow as a crayon. The third was neon green—the color of slime. All three had ID tags crimped to one of 3
their ears. All three were property of the Xylotech Corporation. All three had been biologically engineered to have incredible abilities.
Now the three cats were staring back at the driver in the rearview mirror. They were creeping him out, just a little.
“So, are we doing this thing or what?” the driver asked.
“We most certainly are,” the team leader replied calmly. “We didn’t design that blue mouse to be superintelligent just so it could bite the hand that fed it and set ninety-six other superintelligent mice free. Blue 97 was the ringleader of the jailbreak. He must be studied. Very closely. So must his little brown friend.”
She turned to face the cats.
“Bring them both back to us alive.”
“Awww, do we have to?” said the neon-green cat. The mission commander narrowed her eyes. “Alive. Both of them!”
“All right, all right,” grumbled the green cat.
“We hear and we obey,” said the orange and yellow cats in perfect unison.
The woman in charge clicked a remote. A sidepanel door slid open. The three cats hopped out of 4
the van, landed in the soft grass, and stealthily made their way across the manicured lawn to the house.
And, yes, the three cats could converse with their human handlers.
They had been engineered to be even more special than Blue 97.
They’d been engineered to be a lot meaner, too.
ACHAPTER 2
“Books speak to the mind. Friends speak to the heart.”
—Isaiah
h, Saturday night at Hailey’s house!
Is there any more delightful place to be? No, in my humble opinion, there is not.
Mikayla and I are up on the piano, singing our hearts out. Unfortunately for Hailey, our whitehaired human chum, she cannot hear Mikayla’s melodious voice. Mikayla, like most mice, only sings in an ultrasonic range that humans cannot hear.
I, on the other hand, have taught myself to sing loudly and boldly so all mammals might hear— even humans. I, however, have not taught myself to sing well. Or on pitch. I fear for some of the
glass figurines quaking in the nearby knickknack cabinet.
But we three friends are having fun. And, unlike Hailey, I do get to hear Mikayla’s dulcet tones. That means they are very sweet. Sweeter than honey. Hailey, by the way, is a piano virtuoso. She is quite the ivory tickler, as they say. Excuse me if I am a tad bit verbose. My early days at the Lamina Lab imbued me with a rather voluminous—dare I say prodigious and gargantuan—vocabulary. (I know a lot of big words for big.) Being blue wasn’t the only special trait my former captors gave me. I can also read, write, and speak.
That’s right. No more tap-dancing across a laptop keyboard to express myself. Now, if I want to communicate with Hailey, I simply tell her what’s on my mind.
I first found my voice when I freed my family from the Horrible Place, also known as Lamina Labs, the animal research facility where I and my entire family were born and raised in captivity. My voice grew stronger when I sang at Hailey’s church, during the Blessing of the Animals service. Once I started stringing words together in an audible range that humans could hear, 7
there was no holding me back! Whatever they did to me at the Lamina Lab made me a very fast learner. Now, I am what Hailey calls a “regular chatterbox.”
“Um, Isaiah?” says Hailey, cringing a little as I hit an extremely high note that, if I’m being honest, sounds like the tines of a fork screeching across glass. “Maybe we should knock off singing for a while and go grab a snack.”
“But Mikayla is singing so sweetly,” I say.
Mikayla, who’s still a little shy whenever I brag on her, blushes. Her cheeks turn as pink as her nose. (If I blushed, my cheeks would look purple.)
“Really?” says Hailey.
“Oh, yes, indeedy! She has the most mellifluous voice.”
“Huh,” mutters Hailey. “Too bad I can’t hear her voice instead of yours…”
Mikayla bats her curly eyelashes at me. She and her whole family have grown to admire my special skills and talents.
“You’re officially clever,” she once told me. “You even have an ear tag to prove it.”
It’s true. The Long Coats at the Lamina Lab clamped a 97 on my bright blue ear. To claim me as
their own, just as they did to my ninety-six brothers and sisters. We are all products of their lab experiments and genetic manipulation. Unfortunately, my tag is never coming off. It’s clamped on pretty tight. I’m afraid it’s permanent.
“Isaiah?” says Mikayla. “Could you please ask Hailey if the snack she was suggesting might be a cream horn?”
I twirl a paw in front of my face and give Mikayla an elegant bow. “But, of course.”
Cream horns, those crispy, flaky tubes filled with whipped frosting deliciousness, are Mikayla’s favorite.
“Hailey?”
“Yes, Isaiah?”
“Do you, perchance, have a cream horn that Mikayla might nibble upon?”
“Yep. And crumb cake, too.”
Hidey-ho and what do you know? Crumb cake is my favorite treat. “Are you certain your parents won’t mind if we feast upon your yummy-mummy goodies?”
Hailey shrugs. “It’s Saturday night. Mom and Dad went out to dinner. They left me at home with a microwaved burrito. I figure I deserve all the desserts I want. Plus, I can share them with my friends!”
The three of us traipse off to the kitchen. Hailey props open the lid on the crumb cake, which, according to its box top, came all the way from Hoboken, New Jersey. That means it’s gourmet!
She pulls a white paper bag out of the refrigerator and presents a tubular pastry dusted with white confectioners’ sugar to Mikayla.
“Next time,” Hailey tells Mikayla, “maybe you could just ask me for a cream horn yourself. The only way to find your voice is to use it.”
Mikayla nods. Smiles. And sticks her whole head into the cream end of the curlicue tube. I dive into the crumb cake. Literally. I hop onto the box. The crumb-crusted cake is very spongy, making for a soft and buttery landing. While we scarf down our treats, Hailey enjoys a bowl of peppermint ice cream.
And then we all burp.
Mikayla can definitely do that out loud.
We all laugh.
For a second or two, anyway.
Until three brightly colored ninja cats burst through the flapping pet door that leads out into Hailey’s backyard.
Yipes!
CHAPTER 3
“Courage is often caused by fear. Or cats.”
—Isaiah
My whiskers stick out straight in shock. This sneak attack has caught us by surprise! My heart is racing, which is really saying something, because mouse hearts already beat ten times faster than human ones. I’m so terrified, I’m up to seven hundred beats per minute.
One invading cat is orange, one yellow, and the third is neon green. They’re the same vibrant shades of those colors that I remember seeing on members of my mouse family from the Lamina Lab. And, just
like us lab mice, each of the ferocious felines has a numbered tag crimped to one of its ears.
“Freeze!” hisses the green cat.
Double yipes!
It’s a talking cat!
Hailey’s eyes bulge out so wide, they look like hard-boiled eggs.
“Isaiah?” she says, spreading her arms wide, trying to protect Mikayla and me. “Did I hear what I think I heard?”
“I believe so.”
“How did I hear what I think I heard? How can these cats be talking?”
“Judging by their brightly colored fur, I suspect they’ve had the same…education as I have.”
“Quiet, mouse!” hisses the yellow fellow.
This is not good. Clearly, these cats’ vocabularies have expanded far beyond meow, purr, and brrrrr-eeeppp. They’re just like me! Well, not really. They’re cats and I’m a mouse. But, their DNA must have been bioengineered and manually manipulated, too.
Wait a second…
I’m remembering something Abe told me after I’d rescued my family from the Horrible Place: There’s another Lamina Lab, Isaiah. A place where they do stuff even worse than what they did to us.
I thought he was talking about more lab mice or hamsters or maybe guinea pigs. But, no. Abe said this other lab was experimenting on cats!
Oh, boy. I think I just met some of their top specimens.
And while I was busy thinking those thoughts and remembering those remembrances, the three brightly colored cats have (with military precision, I might add) surrounded us. Hailey has edged her way to the far side of the kitchen island. She is gripping a tub of a lady named Betty Crocker’s creamy vanilla frosting as if it were a baseball.
“Back off or I’ll bean you!” shouts Hailey, cocking back her arm.
“Relax, lady,” snarls the orange cat.
“You two. Come with us,” hisses the yellow cat.
“Um, which two?” I ask, because even though the cat can speak, he (or she) needs to work on their specificity and details.
“You two mice!” snaps the green one.
“And where might we be going?” I ask quite politely. “Because, though you might not be aware, we mice don’t like to roam far from our burrows. In fact, we rarely wander farther than thirty feet away from our established homes.”
“It’s true,” adds Hailey.
“Enough with the talk!” growls the yellow cat. “Come!”
“Come?” I say, proudly puffing up my chest. “We are not dogs, my furry feline friend!”
“And I ain’t your friend.”
“Perhaps. But, if I may offer a friendly suggestion, your grammar could use some improvement. For instance, your usage of the word ain’t. As a wise scholar once advised me, ain’t ain’t a word, and you ain’t supposed to say it.”
Yes, I’m babbling. Buying time. Hoping that inspiration strikes and I devise another escape strategy. I seem to need a lot of those.
“You guys?” says Hailey, glancing over at me and Mikayla. She rears back her throwing arm. Aha! She is going to hurl that heavy tub of frosting. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” inquires the sneering orange cat.
“This!” says Hailey. Mikayla and I duck for cover. Hailey flings the can. It’s a speedball that scatters the cats.
“And this!” I shout, grabbing Mikayla’s hand. We take off running. The cats are momentarily frozen. Hailey’s frosting tub toss raises the brightly colored hackles on the cats’ backs. Hailey gave Mikayla and me a chance to escape!
“Upstairs!” I say as we dash across the living room.
“Yes!” says Mikayla. “There are more places to hide up there!”
We sprint for the staircase and bound up the steps, taking them two at a time. We’re both very good hoppers.
I glance over my shoulder. The creepy cats are only about ten seconds behind us.
Now Hailey zooms after the cats, shouting, “Scat! Leave my friends alone!”
The cats do not obey her commands. They reach the staircase and vault up the steps. The cats can take them three at a time, since they have much longer legs than Mikayla and me.
The green cat leaps over us, blocking our path forward. We slam on our brakes and whip around. The orange cat is between us and Hailey.
Mikayla looks like she wants to say something to Hailey. Her whiskers twitch but she remains silent.
The orange cat springs up into a backflip. It cat apults itself down to the same step that Hailey just reached.
“Hailey!” I shriek, finally shouting what I suspect Mikayla wanted to.
But I’m too late.
The orange devil does what cats do best. It gets underfoot. It weaves in and out between Hailey’s feet to tangle her up at the ankles. Hailey trips, falls backward, plummets three steps, and conks her head on the living room floor.
Youch!
If Hailey were a cartoon, there would be stars and little chirping birds swirling around her head.
She’s out cold.
“RCHAPTER 4
“He who flees from a wolf will find a bear with two cubs instead.”
—Isaiah
un!” I shout. “Up the stairs!”
The green cat swats at us, but we dodge its paws and scoot under it as if the big cat was a furry tunnel.
“We should split up!” Mikayla suggests as we streak up the hallway on the second floor.
There are multiple doorways leading to multiple bedrooms and multiple bathrooms and the special room with all of Hailey’s mom’s craft project supplies.
I nod. Mikayla has spent more time living in Suburbia than I have. She and her mischief—which,
by the way, is the technical term for a family of mice— have lived their whole lives in the Brophy house across the street. The Brophy house is also home to Lucifer, a hairless, extremely muscular sphynx cat. Lucifer has paw pads so thick, it’s like he’s wearing shoes that are still in their shoebox.
Anyway, Mikayla and her family have outrun and outfoxed Lucifer for years. They finally defeated him when I came along and, with their assistance, deployed some clever Napoleonic battle tactics, so named for the famous French military genius Napoléon Bonaparte, not the yummy-mummy puff pastries filled with gooey custard.
Long story short, Mikayla is wiser in the ways of the cat-and-mouse world than me. So, I follow her lead. We split up.
I shoot down the hallway, heading for that arts and crafts room. I might be able to hide inside a bolt of fabric or behind a jar of blue paint.
Mikayla pulls a one-eighty. I see her spin around and scurry down the staircase.
“Get her!” I hear one of the cats howl.
“On it!” the other two roar in reply.
“Blue boy is mine! All mine!”
Behind me, I hear furniture tumble. Glass shatter. Piano keys plink and plunk. I think that last crash was a lamp falling over. Downstairs, Mikayla must be leading her two cats on a merry chase through the living room. I suspect she is also making quite a mess. Hailey’s parents will not be amused.
Hailey!
I should turn around, too. I should fly downstairs and make sure that my special human friend is not seriously injured. I stop running. I need to go back downstairs and defend my friend. Unfortunately, the neon-green cat barreling up the corridor behind me has other plans. I suspect it wants to turn me into a late-night snack.
I hightail it into the craft room. The superintelligent cat hightails it after me.
In fact, both our tails are held high as we hurtle around the room. We knock over jars of glitter, bump into glue bottles, rip through canvas, unspool balls of yarn, wheel out rolls of ribbon, bash into bead bins, topple tubs of markers, accidentally spritz some spray paint, plow through Popsicle sticks, and dash across open ink pads. We leave a trail of black paw prints on the floor, the walls, and the windowsills.
I’m in luck.
One of the windows behind Hailey’s mom’s sewing machine is open just a fraction of an inch. But a crack is all we mice ever need. Fun fact—I have a somewhat collapsible rib cage. We mice can flex our ribs more than most mammals. This allows me to temporarily flatten my chest and squeeze through extremely narrow openings. If my head can fit, so can the rest of my body!
The cat? Not so much. So, I slide out the bedroom window. The cat
bumps its head on the glass. Huzzah! It can no longer chase after me!
The blast of cool air feels wonderful against my flushed cheeks. All that sprinting warmed me up a tad.
I scurry over to a nearby drain spout and clamber up it to the gutter. I grab hold of its metal lip and hoist myself up to the roof.
Phew.
I catch my breath and contemplate how I will sneak back downstairs to check on Hailey and reunite with Mikayla.
I am working on my plan when I realize I won’t be able to use it.
In the soft glow of a streetlamp, I can see all three of the cats proudly prancing across the front lawn to a black van parked at the curb. There is a decal affixed to the side of the van: a clown juggling letters spelling out “party palace.”
Oh, no.
When I squint really hard, I can see something dangling out of the mouth of the yellow cat. A swinging brown body attached to a wiry brown tail.
Yipes! They have Mikayla! They’re mousenapping her!
“WCHAPTER 5
“If you go looking for bad luck, you will soon find it.”
—Isaiah
e got the most important one,” the orange cat says to whoever just slid open the panel door on the side of the van. “We got the girl. The mystery brown mouse. Blue 97 ran away.”
“But we’ll get him next time,” sneers the yellow one. “He’s just become our number one target. America’s most-wanted mouse.”
“Ah, I don’t think he’s really a mouse,” snickers the neon-green cat. “I think he’s more of a chicken!”
Chuckling, the three cats climb into the van. The door slides shut. The van’s tires spew up