They say the past is another country, and that was never more true than for this new young reader’s edition of the Australian classic A Fortunate Life. Albert Facey’s simple recounting of childhood and youth more than a hundred years ago takes place in an Australia that is scarcely recognisable today.

Young readers 10+ will be enthralled by the adventures of young Albert. This is an extraordinary life: escaping cruel employers, managing a farm on his own at 14, boxing his way around Australia, building railways and soldiering. The scenes where Albert joins a cattledroving team across Western Australia are particularly vivid and exciting.

But readers will also be moved when they notice what young Albert lacks: a family to provide real emotional support, a sense of home, and the chance to attend school. The teenage Albert saw early action at Gallipoli, and readers might reflect on the personal cost of war: the energetic, restless teenager returns broken, though he scarcely admits it, to work as a tram conductor and a tram driver.

Nine months after A Fortunate Life was published in 1982, Albert Facey died. But he created an indelible memory of a life in Australia and what it was like for one boy growing up a hundred years ago. A new generation of readers now has the chance to travel back in time.

Mike Shuttleworth is a children’s and YA specialist at Readings Hawthorn.