National Simultaneous Storytime 2025

National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) is held annually by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA).

Every year a picture book, written and illustrated by an Australian author and illustrator, is read simultaneously in libraries, schools, pre-schools, family day cares, childcare centres, bookshops, family homes and many other places around the country. Now in its 25th successful year, it is a colourful, vibrant, fun event that aims to promote the value of reading and literacy

This year it is on Wednesday 21 May. Junior School will be reading at 11am in the Library.

'The Truck Cat' written by Deborah Frenkel, illustrated by Danny Snell, is the book for 2025.

It tells the story of Yacoub, a truck driver and his cat Tinka, who travel roads wide and narrow, near and distant. But no matter where they go, home feels very far away. When Tinka and Yacoub are unexpectedly separated, they are determined to find their way back to each other – and, in doing so, might find for than they expected …

The Truck Cat is a story about cats and humans, immigration and identity, and homes lost and found.

A word from the author …

When you’ve left behind everything you know, how do you find your way home?

I live in Australia, a country where so many people have come from far away. Among them is my own family. In 1947, my maternal grandparents, Polish–Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, disembarked the SS Sagittaire at Sydney’s Circular Quay and began a new life. They changed their surname to something with fewer syllables. They learned the language, slowly. My grandfather found work as a door-to-door fabric salesman, going between rural towns in what must have felt like a startlingly new landscape. At some point, there came a moment when this country of refuge became something more familiar: it became their home. This moment intrigued me. It intrigued me enough to write about it.

The Truck Cat isn’t about 1947, though. It’s about now and, in a way, it’s about always, because if one thing is constant in our modern world, it’s that so many people migrate – whether because of war, poverty, natural disaster or simply the hope of a better life. Their origins are different, but they’re all searching for the same thing: a new place to call home.

And so, in The Truck Cat, Yacoub – like my own grandfather and like so many others – must create for himself a new life in a land far, far away. He must make a new home, even while brimful of memories of the old one.

So, how do you find your way home when you’re in a strange new place?

I discovered one answer in Tinka, the truck cat – because cats are very wise, as any cat person knows. You find people to love. You hold them close. (And chasing the odd insect helps a lot, too).

– Deborah Frenkel

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