HGCP acquires “The Everywhere Train”

Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing (HGCP) has acquired world rights to The Everywhere Train, by author Deborah Frenkel and illustrator Danny Snell.

From the creators of 2025 National Simultaneous Storytime book The Truck Cat, The Everywhere Train “is a powerful story about love and change, imagination and memory, and a girl, her grandpa and one very special train,” according to the publisher.

When Scout’s pop moves into an aged care facility, their Friday train-ride tradition ends abruptly, but Scout and Pop make a plan, building a station by his bed so that they can “step on board a train that can take them anywhere … to yesterday and tomorrow, to here and there, and all the everywheres in between”.

Frenkel said the story was one “about love, about memory and imagination and the things that endure forever, everywhere”. “Deb has written another touching story and I’m excited at what we’ve been working on”, said Snell.

Publisher Chren Byng said, “In The Everywhere Train, Deb and Danny have created something that sits so beautifully alongside The Truck Cat. Once again, we have characters who are whole and real and who you’ll fall in love with.”

Frenkel and Snell’s previous collaboration won awards including CBCA Picture Book of the Year, CBCA Shadow Judging Picture Book of the Year and ABIA Children’s Picture Book of the Year.

HGCP plans to release The Everywhere Train on 1 September 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions