Occasionally a picture book comes along with a story unlikely to remind readers of any other. So it is with The Truck Cat, from Deborah Frenkel (The Sydney Harbour Fairy) and Danny Snell (The Turtle and the Flood). This Australian import satisfies as a straight-up pet tale while also telling a weighty story about belonging.
Cat Tinka rides with a trucker named Yacoub, who drives "all around the country." (The country goes unnamed.) At rest stops, Tinka notes that "other humans didn't always understand Yacoub: his jokes, his words. His silences." Back in the truck, Yacoub is voluble, sharing with Tinka memories of his "home country." (It, too, goes unnamed.) Tinka understands his yearning: he "also had an old home, full of mewling siblings." One morning, Yacoub and Tinka are at a rest stop when the cat has a brush with death while chasing a butterfly. He's rescued by a woman, Mari, who will eventually offer a kind of salvation to Yacoub as well.
The Truck Cat could be exhibit A for the "show, don't tell" storytelling philosophy. Frenkel chooses her language so carefully that she can (and does) omit the words "immigration" and "loneliness" from a book that's about both. Snell's sure hand and generous use of panels facilitate Frenkel's don't-spell-it-out approach. The book's last few pages, starting with an image featuring silhouettes of Yacoub and Mari chatting on the day they meet, indicate that they will have a lifetime's worth of conversations with Tinka underfoot. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author