Deborah Frenkel (text) and Danny Snell (illustrator), The Truck Cat, Bright Light, May 2024, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781761440649
Short listed for the CBCA 2025 Book of the Year Picture Book category.
This is a wonderful picture book, accessible to very young readers wherever they live, but with many messages for older readers too. It’s a story about migration and adjustment, friendship, of finding home no matter where you come from.
Tinka is a cat who lives everywhere, but mostly in the cab of Yacoub’s B-double tri-axle truck. Newcomer Yacoub is a professional driver, loaded with changing cargoes, travelling around the country learning the strange new landscapes while remembering his past home. Yacoub doesn’t always fit in, like Tinka who also remembers his mother and siblings. Tinka hasn’t forgotten to be playful and gets distracted by a butterfly, moving far from the truck, then threatened by unexpected dangers, until he finds Mari and her bakery. Yacoub finally finds the bakery drawn by familiar smells. Tinka becomes more than just a truck cat when he discovers home is everywhere.
Snell’s gently coloured digitally drawings, dominated by pinks, add much detail to the story, expanding the sometimes-sparse verbal text. As the reader turns the pages, they can find many visual details. Not only are there full-page spreads – I love the night scene of the truck with Yacoub and Tinka — but on many pages they resemble graphic novels with boxed and unframed panels. These changes indicate tension or mood change. The endpapers have also been used to expand the storyline.
The Truck Cat is also the 2025 National Simultaneous Storytime title to be held on May 21 this year.
Very Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Maureen Mann
