by Cam Lucadou-Wells
More than 2.2 million tuned online to a national live-streaming of children’s book The Truck Cat at Springvale Library.
The 25th annual National Simultaneous Storytime featured the author Deborah Frenkel reading to a captive audience of about 100 students seated in the library – as well as many more on YouTube.
The book’s illustrator Danny Snell demonstrated how to draw the ‘truck cat’.
Frenkel spoke of how she wrote the book after nursing an injured cat as her husband drove them to the vet.
She was struck how the cat started purring, with her partner commenting that the feline was like it belonged to a truck driver.
And so the story was born.
Meanwhile many other venues hosted Truck Cat readings at the same time 12pm on Wednesday 21 May.
This included Casey mayor and dad Stefan Koomen reading for kids at Myuna Farm, Doveton.
He was joined by fellow reader, Sunny Lesionek from Connected Libraries as well as some of the farm’s resident reptiles and animals.
“It was great to see so many Casey families getting involved and sticking around to enjoy the animals and sunshine,” Koomen later posted on social media.
