Monthly Special
War

Picture Books | Fiction | Nonfiction 

The books recommended below were published within the last several years. Grade levels are only suggestions; the individual child is the real criterion.

Picture Books
Suggested grade level for each entry: K–3

Li’l Dan the Drummer Boy: A Civil War Story written and illustrated by Romare Bearden (Simon)
Li’l Dan, a young slave in the Civil War South who is inseparable from his drum, is taken in by a regiment of black Union soldiers. Grade level: K–3. 40 pages.

Across the Blue Pacific: A World War II Story written by Louise Borden, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker (Houghton)
In 1944, Molly beings writing to neighbor Lieutenant Ted Walker, then must deal with her worry and grief when his submarine disappears. Grade level: K–3. 48 pages.

Silent Music: A Story of Baghdad written and illustrated by James Rumford (Porter/Roaring Brook)
Ali, a boy in contemporary Baghdad who loves to create the letters of Arab calligraphy, struggles to draw the word for peace. Grade level: K–3. 32 pages.

Fiction
Suggested grade level listed with each entry

Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian (Kroupa/Farrar)
Twelve-year-old Vahan describes the horrors of the WWI Armenian genocide and their impact on his family. Grade level: 7 and up. 273 pages.

The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky (Porter/Roaring Brook)
Three sisters in Sydney, Australia, live next-door to the defected Soviet ambassador in 1954 in this lucid, poetic tale of children struggling with a world under threat. Grade level: 4–8. 179 pages.

Sonny’s War by Will Hobbs (Foster/Farrar)
When Corin’s brother Sonny is drafted and sent to Vietnam, she is galvanized by her teacher’s strong antiwar views. Grade level: 7 and up. 215 pages.

An Innocent Soldier by Josef Holub (Levine/Scholastic)
A young German farmhand is conscripted to fight in Napoleon’s army, where, against class boundaries, he forms a bond with an aristocratic fellow soldier. Winner of the 2006 Batchelder Award. Grade level: 7 and up. 232 pages.

Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes (Atheneum)
This World War II novel tells the parallel stories of a paratrooper from Utah and a Hitler Youth who joins the German army. Grade level: 7 and up. 162 pages.

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages (Viking)
“Everything is secret” in 1943 Los Alamos, where Dewey’s dad is working with hundreds of other scientists on a terrifying new invention. Grade level: 4–8. 324 pages.

The Art of Keeping Cool by Janet Taylor (Jackson/Atheneum)
With his father in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Robert’s family moves to Rhode Island to be near his grandparents during World War II. Grade level: 7 and up. 208 pages.

Sunrise over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers (Scholastic)
First-person narration alternates with letters and other communications to relate Private Robin Perry’s experiences in Iraq from February 2003 onward in this companion to Fallen Angels. Grade level: 7 and up. 288 pages.

The River Between Us by Richard Peck (Dial)
A boy’s grandmother recounts the events surrounding two mysterious strangers in her Illinois town during the Civil War. Grade level: 7 and up. 165 pages.

Rex Zero and the End of the World by Tim Wynne-Jones (Kroupa/Farrar)
At the height of the Cold War in 1962 Ottawa, Rex helps a neighborhood gang track down a more manageable threat: an escaped zoo panther. Grade level: 4–8. 186 pages.

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (Lamb/Random)
The idyllic love between Daisy and her cousin Edmond is interrupted when an (unnamed) enemy power invades the country. Grade level: 7 and up. 195 pages.

The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt (Clarion)
Seventh-grader Holling receives unexpected guidance and companionship from his teacher against the threatening backdrop of the Vietnam War. 264 pages.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Knopf)
Narrated by Death itself, this tour de force about an imperiled young booklover in Nazi Germany is a tribute to words, survival, and their inevitable entwinement. Grade level: 7 and up. 553 pages.

Nonfiction
Suggested grade level listed with each entry

Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Scholastic)
This provocative account of the impact of Nazi ideology on those who subscribed to it was a 2006 Newbery Honor Book. Grade level: 7 and up. 176 pages.

War in the Middle East (Candlewick) by Wilborn Hampton
Hampton, who reported on Black September in 1970 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 for United Press International, describes his experiences of both events, including minimal but clear background on the conflicts. Grade level: 7 and up. 112 pages.

Memories of Survival written by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, illustrated by Bernice Steinhardt (Hyperion)
Painstakingly embroidered illustrations detail an inspiring memoir of surviving the Nazi occupation of Poland. Grade level: 4–6. 64 pages.

More lists of Recommended Books