The ratio of “fun circus hijinks” to “running away is miserable, actually” tilts definitively toward misery

May I recommend as an antidote Eloise Jarvis McGraw's Sawdust in His Shoes (1950)? One of my mother's favorite books as a child, out of print for decades, I was finally able to get her a copy a few years ago and I do not recall it containing any kind of gratuitous monkey harm.