Four stunning titles have been shortlisted for the 2009 Guardian children's fiction prize, reflecting both the breadth of writing for children and young adults and an optimism about the power of story to inform and guide. Though the four are widely varied in context, each is the hopeful story of an individual's journey - one which reveals how they have been made, and sometimes unmade, by the society they come from. In different ways, and set in different times, all reflect on how the present is affected by the baggage an individual carries with them from before the start of the story, while also showing that everyone can influence what happens next.

Terry Pratchett's familiar ability to create new worlds, to people them and provide them with a past, present, future and a coherent philosophy is wittily demonstrated in Nation. Mau's world is literally turned upside down when a giant wave sweeps away everything he has known. His home has gone, the village has gone, the Nation, the sophisticated world in which he lived, has gone. And it all happened while Mau was returning from the Boys' Island on his way to becoming an adult. Now a man, Mau has to construct a new nation from nothing, building on history and the advice of the Grandfathers, whose voices will not easily die down. But Mau isn't quite alone; luckily Daphne, or Trouser Man, as Mau calls her, is also alive. How the two survivors must listen to the past even while they create a new future leads to boundless adventure.

 The winner of the prize will be announced on Thursday 8 October