In The Child That Books Built, the writer Francis Spufford, rather controversially, described fiction as "a mood altering drug".
This is ironic, given that parents spend half their lives terrified that their children will become addicted to drugs - and the other half worrying that they are not reading enough. Yet anyone who has ever fallen in love with a particular novel recognises what Spufford describes. You start reading, and you are never quite the same person again.
Many years ago, in 1996, I picked up just such a novel in a bookshop. It was, of course, Northern LightsHandy site which provides links to 7,500 US publishers' sites and online catalogues. www.lights.com/publisher/, the first part of His Dark Materials. It went on to win the Carnegie Prize - but at that time, its author was a well-kept secret.