Deal announcement: Thunderhead by Sophie Beer

Allen and Unwin will publish Sophie Beer’s illustrated middle-grade novel Thunderhead in October this year. How very exciting!

Thunderhead is a heart-squeezing and hopeful middle fiction illustrated novel about the awkwardness of early teen life and the challenge of living with illness and loss – beautifully told with humour, music, art and joy.

Thunderhead is an anxious, music-obsessed kid blurting their angst into a defunct internet forum to avoid the squirmy awkwardness of real life. A real life where Thunderhead is hiding a big secret – a secret that if revealed will brand them with the dreaded stigma of being the PWSC, the “poor widdle sick kid”. And nobody wants that. 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 manage the storm brewing in their brain and to find the courage to unfurl their heart a little to gain a lot.

Drawing on her own personal experiences for inspiration, Sophie Beer delivers an indelible illustrated novel, immediately engaging, fresh, funny, warm, sad, utterly authentic and entirely unputdownable.