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  • Published: 30 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9781761047169
  • Imprint: Picture Puffin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 32
  • RRP: $21.00

Chugga Tugga Tugboat



What a lot of jobs a tugboat has to do in a busy city port! Will it ever get some time off?

Spend the day at the port with a very busy tugboat in this colourful picture book, perfect for preschoolers fascinated with boats and ships.
Chugga tugga tugboat, chugging out to sea,
Can’t you, won’t you, play with me?
No, I’m too busy with this tanker.
Splish splosh, wish wash,
TOOT TOOT TOOT!

Chugga tugga tugboat, chugging out to sea,
Can’t you, won’t you, play with me?
No, I’m too busy with this cruise ship.
Splish splosh, wish wash,
TOOT TOOT TOOT!

From cruise ships and tankers to yachts and barges, readers will love exploring the gorgeously detailed port and water scenes over and over again.

Sally Sutton knows the subjects little children love to venture out and explore in the world around them, and she also always knows just how to bring them back home again, safe for a snuggly goodnight. Her bouncy rhymes are huge fun to read aloud, and are so catchy that kids will quickly learn the words by heart.

Teamed with Sarah Wilkins’ stunning illustrations depicting a little boy at play at home, along with a bustling busy and a variety of vessels and water activities visible through the windows, Chugga Tugga Tugboat is a gorgeous companion to Crane Guy.

  • Published: 30 January 2024
  • ISBN: 9781761047169
  • Imprint: Picture Puffin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 32
  • RRP: $21.00

About the authors

Sally Sutton

Aucklander Sally Sutton has been writing picture books, children's novels and plays for two decades. Her stories are celebrated for being 'busy with joy, and colour, and words that boing off the page' (The Spinoff) - making reading her stories a magical moment between parent and child. Sally has been awarded several Storylines Notable Book Awards for her work, and in 2009 she and illustrator Brian Lovelock won the Picture Book category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults for Roadworks. Her 2018 story about a cat's amazing true journey, The Cat from Muzzle (illustrated by Scott Tulloch), was a bestseller.

Read more about Sally at www.sallysutton.co.nz

Sarah Wilkins

Sarah Wilkins was born in Lower Hutt. The middle child of seven, she dreamt of becoming a solo explorer. Dreaming and drawing, which she loved, go together, so she became an illustrator instead. Her award-winning images can be found on buildings, buses, bags and many other curious places around the world, but they feel most at home on the pages of beautiful books.

She is curious about visually communicating science for young and old, and the first book in her series with author Matthew Cunningham, Abigail and the Birth of the Sun, won the Best Picture Book Award in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2020. She illustrated its sequel, Abigail and the Restless Raindrop, while completing her Master in Science in Society.

Sarah works from a light-filled studio perched high on a hill overlooking the Wellington Harbour. Find out more about her work at www.sarahwilkins.net

Praise for Chugga Tugga Tugboat

Sally Sutton is the queen of onomatopoeia picture books...Parents and grandparents will enjoy reading it to their children at bedtime and just as well, because they're bound to be asked to read it again, and again, and again.

Maria Gill, KidsBooksNZ

[A] beautiful BIG book bursting with energy...Wilkins’s illustrations are again a perfect match for Sutton’s words.

Anne Kerslake Hendricks, NZ Booklovers