"What does a good novel do for you? Make you laugh? Make you cry, gasp, clutch the pages, miss your stop on the bus? Well, yes. All of those things. But I like a novel that also illuminates a corner of the real world that I hardly knew existed, and brings it to life.
Good historical novels do that. Geoffrey Trease hard-wired ancient Greece into my imagination and Rosemary Sutcliff did the honours for Roman Britain. But some novels work the same magic for the world as it is today. They teleport us to live for a while in distant places we only hear about on the news. It's a risky business, and history might frown on some of these interpretations, but the dramatic stories they tell are every bit as poignant, exciting and memorable as the most action-soaked fantasies. In a world where ignorance of Out There is a real threat to world peace, they do an important job, too."
Elizabeth Laird was born in New Zealand. On leaving university, she lived and taught for some time in Addis Ababa. In between her travels in Malaysia, India and Ethiopia, Liz has also lived for sometime in Lebanon, Iraq and Austria with her husband and two sons. She has written over 30 books for children, has been shortlisted five times for the CILIP Carnegie Medal as well as every other major children's book award. Her latest book, The Prince Who Walked With Lions, is a historical epic, based on a true story, about an Ethiopian prince who is torn from his mountain home and must build a new life as an "English gentleman".
Buy The Prince Who Walked With Lions at the Guardian bookshop
1. The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai
Like most good children's books, this one starts with sick and enfeebled parents, and children who take their own fate into their hands and give it a good shake. Living in dire circumstances in their Indian village, Hari (aged 14) slips off to work in Bombay, leaving Lila (13) to look after the younger children. Their struggles and eventual triumphs are utterly gripping, and the book wonderfully evokes the scents, sights and sounds of India.
2. The Frozen Waterfall by Gaye Hicyilmaz
When it comes to migrating cultures, particularly between Turkey and Europe, Gaye Hicyilmaz knows of what she speaks, and she writes about it wonderfully in this novel. Selda is uprooted from her home in Turkey to live in Switzerland, and her experiences of displacement and finding a new identity mirror that of tens of thousands of teenagers in this country and elsewhere. You desperately want Selda to make it through and be happy. She does.
3. The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo
This is a barnstormer of a book (it won the Carnegie Medal) and is imbued with Beverley Naidoo's passion for justice. It describes the experiences of a brother and sister who have to flee Nigeria at a moment's notice when their father is arrested. Abandoned at Victoria Station, they are picked up by the authorities and sent to foster homes. Their attempts to find their uncle, and save their father from a dreadful fate in Nigeria, make a thrilling story.
4. Iqbal by Francesco D'Adamo
A true story about a real person, Iqbal, and a reality for thousands of children in today's Pakistan. Iqbal, from a poor Pakistani family, was sold as a child to work in a carpet factory. Living with other desperate and exploited children, Iqbal decided to take action. He organised brilliant acts of resistance and sabotage, until he finally escaped. I read this book 10 years ago, but I think of it with respect every time I pass a carpet shop.
5. Asylum by Rachel Anderson
This novel isn't set Out There, but well and truly here, in a condemned tower block. Sunday, a 15-year-old asylum seeker from Africa, finds himself in the role of caretaker. He befriends Rosa, from Eastern Europe. Rachel Anderson can create a character out of a few wisps of words and dialogue who is quite different from anyone else you'll ever meet in fiction. In this terrific novel, Sunday makes friends with Rosa, and with a whole cast of other extraordinary people living on the fringe of society. They're funny, touching, unexpected, and unique.
6. Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy
Trent Reedy is a most unexpected children's author. He is an American National Guardsman who was called up to take part in the war in Afghanistan, and he has written a novel about a young Afghan girl with a cleft palate and a hopeless life ahead of her, who is operated on by good-hearted American surgeons. A recipe, you might think, for a whitewash of the United States' disastrous intervention in Afghanistan. You would be wrong. Words in the Dust is a subtle, nuanced story, which shows a real understanding for family life in Afghanistan, and a respect for the people and their suffering. I couldn't put it down.
7. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
And talking of Afghanistan, you couldn't find a story more real than this one. You may have seen the film but that's no reason not to read this wonderful novel. It's far from being a children's book, and has a depth and breadth of plot that is almost Shakespearean, but young and old alike will be enthralled by this tale of betrayal, loyalty, guilt and retribution. There is no more compelling guide to the inner workings of Afghan society.
8. Out of the Shadows by Jason Wallace
Set in the early days of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, when there was real optimism about the new multi-racial nation, this gripping story follows the experience of Robert Jacklin, an English boy, whose idealistic father has taken up a civil service post in Harare. Robert quickly abandons a nascent friendship with Nelson, a young African, in favour of Ivan, a charismatic boy committed to a violent and revengeful racism. Events unroll with frightening intensity. Jason Wallace never compromises his characters' views and statements, which makes for uncomfortable reading in places, especially in his descriptions of violence, but in the end he leaves the reader in no doubt about where the rights and wrongs lie. A harsh but deeply authentic story.
9. Everybody Jam by Ali Lewis
Ali Lewis's first novel, set in the Australian desert, is a hot blast of action and feeling. Written in the voice of 13-year-old Danny, who is obsessed with the young camel he is training, and is still grieving after the death of his beloved older brother, it takes us through the thrilling annual cattle muster, when thousands of semi-wild animals have to be brought in from the desert. Ali Lewis confronts Danny's racist attitudes towards his sister's Aboriginal lover, his first experiment with alcohol, and attraction to the Pommie girl helper with uncompromising honesty. The feelings are deep and true, but never wander into sentimentality. A beast of a book.
10. Where I Belong by Gillian Cross
In a story set in Somalia, you'd expect guns, bandits, hunger and drought, but you wouldn't expect high fashion and supermodels to enter the mix. There are wonderful ironies, superbly evoked, as the worlds of Gillian Cross's starkly different characters collide and interact. It all sounds fantastical, but it all really could be true, and when you've read this book, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing a whole lot more about a part of the world that's in the news for all the wrong reasons.
