National Simultaneous Storytime 2025 – Celebrating Story, Connection and The Truck Cat

Every year, thousands of educators, librarians, families and children stop what they’re doing to share in one extraordinary moment of storytelling. At exactly 12:00pm AEST on Wednesday 21 May 2025, schools, libraries, homes, and early learning centres across Australia will pause to read the same book at the same time—and this year’s story is beautiful.

The Truck Cat by Deborah Frenkel, and illustrated by Danny Snell, has been selected as the official book for the Australian Library and Information Association’s National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) 2025. It’s a heart-warming tale of love, belonging, and the unlikely companionship between a long-haul truck driver and a little rescue cat.

At Learn From Play, we’re proud to be celebrating our sixth consecutive year supporting this event, with free and premium activities that help educators bring each story to life in the classroom. We know first-hand teachers are time-poor, and our mission is to help you take a moment like NSS and use it as an opportunity to create a meaningful, curriculum-rich learning experience.

This year, we’ve created an incredible set of twenty-two activities to accompany The Truck Cat – perfect for classrooms and beyond. Whether you’re looking for hands-on crafts, literacy-rich tasks, or cross-curricular extensions, we’ve got you covered.

Your students can:

• Build their own cardboard truck and imagine life on the road;

• Draw a cat character and create a profile for them;

• Learn a traditional European circle dance as a nod to the multicultural journey explored in the story;

• Explore mazes and logic puzzles inspired by the cat’s travel adventures;

• Compare and contrast similarities and differences in homes, vehicles, or cultures;

• Retell the story in sequence or from another character’s point of view;

• Write a letter as if they were the truck driver, reflecting on the journey and their new furry companion.

With rich themes like multiculturalism, family, love, friendship, exploration and immigration, The Truck Cat opens the door to deep and thoughtful class discussions. You might choose to extend the learning across a week with a mini-unit exploring how people move across the world and the ways we find home in unexpected places. You could compare life on the road with your students’ own experiences, or study real-world maps to trace the journey of the characters. Our activities are flexible, inclusive, and designed to be teacher-friendly—print and go, or project on the board and collaborate together.  

NSS is more than a reading event; it’s a celebration of literacy, community and the power of story to unite us—whether you’re in a remote outback classroom or a city library with hundreds of children gathered on a rug. We encourage you to grab a copy of The Truck Cat, join us in this special tradition, and support us by using our activities afterwards to make the most of the event. 

For every book we support, including The Truck Cat, there are free sample activities, but it’s our incredible Learn From Play community of paid supporters who keep the lights on and the ideas flowing. As a full-time teacher librarian, nothing brings me more joy than seeing your class creations, hearing how a story touched a student’s heart, or watching that little notification pop up saying someone’s valued our resources with a paid subscription.

So mark your calendar for Wednesday 21 May, 12:00pm AEST—let’s read The Truck Cat together and share the joy of books beyond the words. Let’s make this NSS the most memorable yet.