It's the Sound of the Thing: 100 new poems for young people

Subtitled '100 new poems for young people', It's the Sound of the Thing is an exuberant and evocative collection of poetry from Maxine Beneba Clarke, one of Australia's most innovative and celebrated poets. 

This extraordinary collection celebrates the joy of language and features enticing and relatable poems about everyday life – the sounds of the block, the boredom of detention and the happenings in the schoolyard. Poems about candy, peanut butter and pets. Poems about a big brother's messy room, a grandfather's fading memory and a grandmother's garden magic.

Through haiku, sonnets, narrative verse, rhyming couplets, limericks, free verse, tongue-twisters and more, Maxine invites readers to fall in love with the wonder that is poetry.

Awards

• Winner, 2024 ABIA Book of the Year for Younger Children (Ages 7-12)
• Shortlisted, 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards
• Shortlisted, 2024 Australian Book Industry Awards
• Best Australian Children's Books of 2023 -- The Guardian
• Best of 2023 -- Aussie Bookstagang
• One of Readings' 100 Bestselling Kids & YA Books of 2023

About the Author

Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of the short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the memoir The Hate Race and the poetry collections Carrying the World and How Decent Folk Behave. Her children's picture books include the CBCA Honour book The Patchwork Bike and the illustrated poem When We Say Black Lives Matter, which was longlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal. She is currently Poet in Residence at the University of Melbourne.