The Truck Cat is a story about cats and humans, immigration and identity, and homes lost and found.
With illustrations by multi-award-winning artist Danny Snell and words by award-winning new voice Deborah Frenkel, The Truck Cat is the perfect book to inspire kindness and compassion in young children everywhere.
Some cats are house cats. Some are apartment cats.
But Tinka is a truck cat. Tinka lives everywhere.
Along with his human, Yacoub, Tinka travels roads wide and narrow, near and distant. But no matter how much they travel, home feels very far away – for both of them.
Yacoub drives his truck to make a living, learning the landscape of a new country along the way, and longing for connection. When Tinka and Yacoub are unexpectedly separated, they are determined to find their way back to each other – and, in doing so, might find more than they expected
The Truck Cat
Deborah is an awarded writer of picture books and an as-yet-unawarded starer-outer-er of windows. Her books include the CBCA-shortlisted Naturopolis, The Sydney Harbour Fairy, 100 School Days and The Truck Cat, which is the 2025 National Simultaneous Storytime title.
When she’s not writing books, she’s writing other things you might have read (billboards, bus ads, the words on the back of cereal boxes), which means she’s a great source of unsolicited trivia. She also loves visiting schools and libraries and swapping window-staring for collaborative creativity.
She lives on Bunurong land, in Melbourne’s inner west, with her family and an enormous tuxedo cat.