It’s the Sound of the Thing is an exuberant and evocative collection of poetry for young people 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.

• Winner – Australian Book Industry Awards 2024, Book of the Year for Younger Children
• Shortlisted – DANZ Children's Book Award 2025 
• Shortlisted – Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2024
• Best Australian Children's Books of 2023 –- The Guardian
• Best of 2023 – Aussie Bookstagang
• One of Readings' 100 Bestselling Kids & YA Books of 2023