The Cricket in Times Square meets Finding Nemo ―a subway rat must cross New York City to bring his lost little brother home. Raffie Lipton lives a rat’s dream life. In his family’s subway station home, he has all the food he can forage from the treasure chests humans call trash cans, and the perfect shoebox bed for telling his brother his famous adventure stories. But when one of those stories goes awry and his little brother is taken from their Brooklyn subway station, Raffie must set out on an adventure across the city to find him. Along the way, he meets other urban animals―a street-wise pigeon, a pampered show dog, a genteel cockroach―and he faces hungry cats, greedy squirrels, and sewer rat kings. In Raffie on the Run , Jaqueline Resnick crafts a tale of friendship and adventure, where a little rat with a big imagination must embark on his own real-life story, and find the inner hero he isn’t sure he has. Jacqueline Resnick lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughter, where she can usually be found writing, drinking chai lattes, or making just one more trip to the bookstore. Joe Sutphin lives in a red barn in Ohio. He’s the illustrator of Word of Mouse by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein, and when he’s not drawing, he can be found outside, looking under rocks for critters. Raffie on the Run By Jacqueline Resnick Roaring Brook Press Copyright © 2018 Jacqueline Resnick All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62672-866-0 Contents Title Page, Copyright Notice, Dedication, Prologue, 1 Rat Race, 2 A Cat-and-Mouse Game, 3 Pack Rats, 4 A Sitting Duck, 5 Fly the Coop, 6 A Fish out of Water, 7 Birds of a Feather Flock Together, 8 A Deer in Headlights, 9 Don't Get Your Feathers in a Bunch, 10 A Little Monkey Business, 11 Not a Clay Pigeon, 12 Don't Chicken Out, 13 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, 14 Not Just Puppy Love, 15 In the Doghouse, 16 A Dog and Pony Show, 17 Not a Spring Chicken Anymore, 18 A Dog-Eat-Dog World, 19 Every Dog Has Its Day, 20 Kill Two Birds with One Stone, 21 Bugging Out, 22 Free as a Bird, 23 Queen Bee, 24 Squirrel Away, 25 Make a Beeline for It, 26 Can't Squirrel out of This, 27 In the Lion's Den, 28 Nervous as a Long-Tailed Cat in a Room Full of Rocking Chairs, 29 Pull a Rabbit out of a Hat, 30 Like a Moth to a Flame, 31 Like a Pig in Slop, 32 Bird's-Eye View, 33 A Little Bird Told Me, 34 Open That Can of Worms, 35 Fish in Troubled Water, 36 Happy as a Clam, 37 Straight from the Horse's Mouth, 38 Raining Cats and Dogs, 39 A Drowned Rat, 40 Ratted Out, 41 Don't Let the Cat out of the Bag, 42 Smell a Rat, 43 Bull's-Eye, 44 Till the Cows Come Home, 45 Like Ducks to Water, 46 A Rat's Tale, Epilogue, Author's Acknowledgments, Illustrator's Acknowledgments, About the Author and Illustrator, Copyright, CHAPTER 1 Rat Race I scurry along a pipe, the smell of pizza still fresh in my snout. I climb over a cinder block, weave around a glob of dust, and squeeze through a crack in the insulation. I strike a pose as my paws land on the woven straw-wrapper rug in my family's living nook. "Selfie!" I declare. I picked that word up from a human recently. It's a fancy way of announcing your arrival. "Raffie!" My baby brother, Oggie, jumps off the chair I crafted for him out of a dirt-stuffed sock. He scurries over to me, his whiskers twitching with excitement. "Did you see the pizza? Did you did you did you?" I laugh as I head over to our new row of cupboards. It took my dad months to forage enough cereal boxes to build them. "Maybe," I tease. "And maybe it's only missing a single bite this time." "Yum yum yum," Oggie cheers. Everyone has their favorite food. Dad loves slurping up sour milk. Mom is a fan of day-old curries. My older sister, Lulu, never turns down rotten fruit. But Oggie and I have a shared love. Sour tomato sauce ... moldy cheese ... hardened crust ... There is nothing in the world better than a slice of aged pizza. I pull a white paper carton out of the cupboard. It's filled with the slop my mom mixes up out of leftover forages. This one smells of blackened bananas and melted ice cream and hardened noodles and just a hint of sticky rice. I fill two bottle caps and nudge one over to Oggie. "Snack is served." "I don't want slop," Oggie whines. "I want pizza!" He presses his snout against mine and blinks his big, round eyes. "Pleaaaaase, Raffie?" "I'll go forage it as soon as Mom or Dad gets back to watch you," I promise. "They'll kill me if they find out I left you alone just to go check for the pizza. Besides, what do I always say?" Oggie slurps up his slop in a single bite. "Aged pizza is the best pizza," he recites. "Exactly." I lap up my own slop. "The longer that pizza ages in the treasure chest, the better it will taste." There's a loud clatter behind us. I turn around to see Lulu pushing her way through an air vent. She's wearing ketchup packets on her paws, a paper sleeve from a cup around