Laird pens novel about Syrian refugee crisis

Children’s author Elizabeth Laird has written a book about the Syrian refugee crisis, which is due for publication by Macmillan Children’s Books in January 2017.

Welcome to Nowhere focuses on a 12-year-old Omar who has to flee his family home in Bosra when the bombs begin to fall.

Laird wrote the story after spending time volunteering in refugee camps in Jordan in 2015. She said: “We in the west, in the comfort of our homes, with our NHS, our free schools, our benefits and all our privileges, find it hard to grasp the fear and desperation of people who have lost everything, including their hope for the future. These people are people like us, with professions, lifestyles and families like ours. Unfortunately we are often encouraged by some of our politicians and our media to see them only as potential terrorists, as scroungers, as threats to our way of life.

“I wanted to show a family behind the statistics, parents and children caught up in a desperate civil war, coping in impossible circumstances in the best way they can.”

Rachel Kellehar, editor at Macmillan Children’s Books, bought world rights from Hilary Delamere at The Agency, and will publish th title in hardback on 12th January 2017.

Fifty pence per copy of the hardback edition will be donated to an international aid agency supporting the Syrian refugee crisis

Belinda Rasmussen, publisher at Macmillan Children’s Books, said: “Elizabeth Laird has succeeded again in writing an incredibly powerful novel, this time about one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our age. We are extremely proud to be publishing this book to help foster understanding, empathy and support for those who have lost everything and can’t go home.”