Rat Race (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9798225045616)

In this imaginative adventure from Newbery Medal-winning author Avi, four rats will face the ultimate test when they learn to do what no rat has ever learned to do before: Drive.

There's a whole world on the outside surely waiting for these four lab rats to finally walk among them...

Starting tomorrow, Rats, your lives are going to become different...

Moosh is a three-year-old rat who's never seen anything other than the inside of Doc's laboratory. But one day, before Doc closes the lab for the night, Moosh overhears her telling her assistant that tomorrow, the rats will learn to do something extraordinary. Something that no rat has ever done before. The thing is, Moosh, Kalta, Panya, and Noo can already do some extraordinary things. They can swim, push levers, turn over boxes, and find their way out of a maze. They've done just about everything they could do within the four walls of Doc's lab, except leave it.

But the next day, something extraordinary does happen. With the help of a mysterious box with windows on four sides and wheels on the bottom, Moosh shoots forward and begins to move faster than he's ever moved before. With a delicious carrot tempting him on the other side of the room, and a whir and a bolt jolting him forward, Moosh learns how to drive a car...

Moosh has always dreamed of freedom, but he's never fully tasted it until this very moment. And now with news of Doc leaving the lab for good and the threat of Feeder, their nighttime rat-hating nemesis ready to strike, it's clear what he has to do: he has to teach the other rats to drive their way out of this lab and into the real world.