Thunderhead

Captivating, memorable and deeply funny, Thunderhead is a heart-squeezing and hopeful illustrated middle grade novel about music, disability, friendship and fandom - beautifully told with humour, art and joy. Perfect for fans of Wonder and Lenny's Book of Everything.

NOTABLE BOOK: 2025 CBCA Book of the Year, Older Readers
Selected as one of the Best Middle Grade Books for 2024 – Readings Books

When I listen to music it speaks to me, fills up my soul until I'm bursting with the rainbow-sprinkled, breathless, blush-red joy of being ALIVE.

Meet Thunderhead: awkward, music-obsessed and a magnet for bad luck. Their favourite things in life are listening to records and hanging out with their best (and only) friend Moonflower. But Thunderhead has a big secret. And when Moonflower moves schools, they're faced with the reality of surviving the wilderness of high school alone. Make new friends? NOTHANKYOUVERYMUCH. As two big life events approach, Thunderhead posts playlists and heartfelt diary entries as an outlet to try to make sense of their changing world, to try to calm the storm brewing in their brain and to try to find the courage to unfurl their heart.

Drawing on Sophie Beer's own experience of hearing loss, this indelible illustrated middle grade novel about music, disability, friendship and fandom is immediately engaging, utterly authentic and entirely unputdownable.