Elizabeth Laird is the multi-award winning author of many successful young fiction and YA novels. Her travels across the world have influenced her style of writing and choice of topics; she is well known for tackling a wide range of global issues through her work.
Between 1996 and 2003, Elizabeth made five extensive journeys throughout Ethiopia to collect over 300 folk stories in a project set up with the British Council. She produced fourteen English readers for Ethiopian schools and created two websites, www.ethiopianfolktales.com and www.ethiopianfolktalesforkids.com. Birlinn Polygon published her account of her travels, the storytellers she met and some of the stories they told.
Elizabeth has written several collections of folktales for children, published by Frances Lincoln and Oxford University Press.
Publications by Macmillan in recent years are The Fastest Boy in the World, Dindy and the Elephant, Song of the Dolphin Boy – and Secret Friends which was originally published by Hodder.
Her backlist titles Red Sky in the Morning, Oranges In No Mans Land, The Garbage King, Crusade, Kiss the Dust, Jakes’s Tower and A Little Piece of Ground were all beautifully rejacketed by Macmillan throughout 2016, 2017 and 2018. Previously, her novel The Garbage King (winner of the Scottish Arts Council Children’s Book of the Year award) was adapted by the Unicorn Theatre.
Elizabeth’s publications also include picture book retellings of Tales by Rumi Grobblechops and Two Ants Puzzled (Tiny Owl), Gloria’s Porridge (Tiny Owl), Welcome to Nowhere and A House Without Walls (Macmillan).
Elizabeth has also written The Name Game (Tiny Owl), a picture book illustrated by Olivia Holden about a little girl with a big imagination, The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown (PanMacmillian) inspired by Elizabeth’s own childhood growing up in post-war London and Stories of Peace and Kindness (Otter-Barry Books) which highlights the importance of peace and kindness in our lives through these timeless, inspirational stories from seven countries. Elizabeth also contributed to the Amnesty International-endorse anthology Our Rights!:Stories and Poems about Children’s Rights, published by Otter-Barry.
