BAILLIE, Alan     Little brother   1985
Vithy and Mang are in flight from the Khmer Rouge. A young boy's search for his older brother through the war ravaged countryside of Cambodia.

BALDERSON,    When Jays fly to Barbmo
The story of Ingeborg's life in the far north of Norway during the German occupation.

BAWDEN, Nina    Carrie's war  1974
During WWII Carrie and her young brother are evacuated to a small Welsh town. Things get tough when Carrie tries to patch up the rift between her host, an overbearing religious zealot, Councillor Evans and his relatives at a nearby farm. Based on the author's own experience as an evacuee.

BAYLIS-WHITE, Mary   Sally and Rebecca   1989
Sally, at school in England just prior to World War II, befriends Rebecca, a Jewish girl evacuated from Germany.

BENARY, Margot   The ark    1954 o.p.    Rowan Farm  sequel
The experiences of a refugee family in post war Germany who find work and shelter on a farm

BERNA, Paul    They didn't come back
Based on an incident which actually happened in the summer of 1944 in France.  25 years later, 14 year old Michel Fontanier and his friends solve the mystery of this unexplained disaster.

BLOCH, Marie    Displaced Person   1978
Stefan and his father, Ukrainians caught between the slavery of their German "liberators" and the vengeful Russians, wander through Eastern Europe in the last days of the war.

Boy soldiers [video] More Winners series
The theme of conscientious objectors in WWI

BRUCKNER, K     The day of the bomb
It is August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan, the day the Americans first dropped the atomic bomb.

BURTON, Hester   In spite of all terror   1968
Liz is evacuated to a country family, whose cultural background makes her feel isolated. The drama of Dunkirk brings her closer to the Brutons and gives her a place in their lives.

CARR, Roger Vaughan   Andy on guard   1994

COERR, Eleanor   Sadako and the thousand paper cranes 
Based on the true story: the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima on the survivors is witnessed when Sadako is stricken with leukaemia.

COOPER, Gordon   A certain courage   1975
Hilary Turner, evacuated from London, makes her home with the Colliers ('A time in the city'). More a chronicle of events and of wartime life, than a story of real people.

COOPER, Susan   Dawn of fear   1973
During WWII, Derek and his friends began to know hatred and fear when their camp was destroyed, not by an air raid, but by a gang of boys in a mock war. When a friend of Derek's was killed in an air raid, he came to realise what war really meant.

DEJONG, Meindert   The house of sixty fathers   1976
The story of a Chinese boy, separated from his family during the war against Japan.  The sixty fathers are members of a US Air Force Unit who befriend him when he is searching for his family in Japanese occupied China.

DICKINSON, Peter AK 1990
The imaginary country of Nagala represents African states plagued by civil war. 12 to 15

DILLON, Eilis Children of Bach 1993
The fear, suspicion, despair and tenacity of a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II. The common thread holding the surviving family members together, and also playing an integral part in an excitingly tense plot, is the music of Bach. A precarious escape to safety. Worthy companion to Lois Lowry's Number the stars [B.S. Mitchell SCIS]

DONALDSON, Margaret  The moon's on fire  1980
In the summer of 1940 Janey is stranded in France. She decides she must find her father, even though it means travelling north again into a part of France already under German occupation. When she meets up with Polish twins they try to sabotage the German headquarters in a village, but Janey is taken prisoner.

ELDRIDGE, Jim The Trenches; Billy Stevens the Western Front 1914-1918 [My story]

As with others in this series the setting and background for this book is historically correct and the adventures, experiences based on factual accounts but the hero is fictional and the book itself is classified as fiction. This is a moving and inevitably sad tale as Billy loses friends in the trenches but he survives to tell his tale. The authentic detail is supported with clear factual information in the historical note as well as a timeline.

EVENHUIS, Gertie   What about me? 
There is rivalry between two brothers in German occupied Holland in 1943. Dirk's desire to help in the Dutch Resistance is not taken seriously by his family.  His resourcefulness at rescuing a young Jewish person separated from family shows his maturity and bravery.

FRENCH, Jackie   Hitler's daughter   1999 (Book of the Year 2000)
Anna tells great stories. This one raises lots of questions for Mark. Grim, but very clever.

FRENCH, Jackie   Soldier on the hill   1997

GALLICO, P    The snow goose
The moving story of a painter who lost his life in the Dunkirk rescue operation.

GRIESE, Arnold   The wind is not a river   1978
When the Japanese invade an Aleutian island, two children show generosity to an injured soldier.

ter HAAR, Jaap  Boris  1971
The savagery of the German siege of Leningrad is seen through the eyes of 12 year old Boris as he and his friend Nadia cross no-man's land in search of food and are captured by a German patrol. Nadia later freezes to death but because a German soldier once helped him, Boris balances the hate.

HAUGAARD, Erik   Chase me, catch nobody
Erik, a Danish boy on holiday in 1937, is asked by a desperate stranger to complete a mission.

HAUGARD, Erik   The little fishes   1969
Guido, a twelve year old orphan in Naples during the war, is forced to become a beggar.

HAUTZIG, Esther   The endless steppe 
The Rudomins are exiled to Siberia for five years, forced by the Russians to leave Poland barefoot and without coats.

HENEGHAN, James  Wish me luck 1998
Jamie's parents put him on board a ship bound for Canada, to keep him safe from air raids during the second world war. Jamie doesn't want to go because he's sure that when he returns to Liverpool he'll be ;labelled a coward by his schoolmates - but how wrong he turns out to be! Jamie finds himself in the midst of war and fighting for his life. Based on a true story. 

HILL, Deirdre   Flight from fear  1988
Tommy's mother and sister were killed in an air raid. When he comes to live in Australia he has a phobia about planes flying overhead. Help comes form an unexpected source.

HOLM, Ann    I am David 
For David, a 12 year old boy who knows nothing about the world beyond life in a concentration camp, his escape to freedom is both a frightening and wonderful journey of discovery.

KAY, Mara    Storm warning   1976
When Ann's uncle, an English journalist, is hurt in a car smash in Germany she stays with Frau Meixner, who is sheltering two Jewish girls.  This tells of Ann's experiences in Nazi Germany.  While it lacks the depth of some other novels of this period, it is a very readable story.

KERR, Judith    When Hitler stole pink  rabbit 
Exciting and funny episodes of the author's childhood when her German-Jewish family fled Berlin on the day of the elections which brought Hitler into power.  They had to keep moving on, to a Swiss village and then to Paris. 

KERR, Judith    The other way round   1975
This sequel continues the story of  Anna, now living in wartime England.

LEVITIN, Sonia   Journey to America   1970
A Jewish girl's story of her family's escape from Nazi Germany and eventually to America. 

LINGARD, Joan   The file on Fraulein Berg   1980
Three girls join together to hound their German-born teacher, convinced she is spy, only to discover that she has lost all of her family in the concentration camps.

LOWRY, Lois   Number the stars 
10 year old Ann Marie Johansen lives in Denmark. The Danes are involved in the remarkable smuggling of 7000 Jewish people, pursued by the Nazis, to the safety of Sweden. Anne Marie helps her friend Ellen escape with her family, showing courage and enterprise.

MAGORIAN, M    Goodnight Mr Tom
A moving story of a deprived child from London who is evacuated to the country during WWII. Mr Tom has lived by himself in a tiny village in Wales since the death of his wife and child.

MARK, J    Thunder and Lightnings

MATTINGLEY, Christobel  No guns for Asmir    1993  Asmir in Vienna  1995 
A Muslim family flees Sarajevo, Bosnia leaving the father behind. Based on a true story.

MATTINGLEY, Christobel   Escape from Sarajevo 1996
Asmir's father, Muri's story.

McCUTCHEON, Elsie   Summer of the Zeppelin   1983
In England during World War I two children set up an old deserted house as a sanctuary and face a dilemma when a German prisoner chooses it as a hiding place.

O'NEILL, Judith   Deepwater 1987
"One of the best reconstructions of Australian rural life during World War I" (Saxby and Smith)

PRINCE, Alison  How's business 1987
For Howard Grainger, being evacuated is more frightening than the nightly bombing raids on war-torn London. He settles in, enjoying weekly letters from his mother, until suddenly, they stop coming. With just a few pence to his name, How makes the dangerous journey back to London. Alone in the bomb blasted city, he sets out to find out what has happened.

REES, David  The Exeter blitz 1978
As the long terrifying night ended, Colin found out what happened to each of his family members, made a friend out of an enemy, and a learnt a great deal about himself.

REISS, Johanna     The upstairs room   1973 
Two young girls, attempting to avoid Jewish deportation, are hidden for over two years by a Dutch farming family.  The frustration and boredom come over clearly. Another true story.

REISS, Johanna     The journey back   1976
In this sequel the family is reunited and rebuilds from the war's shattering effects.

ROSS, Stewart  Only a matter of time  2001
It's early in 1999 when Drita, an Albanian, and Zoran, a Serb, become friends. but this is Kosovo, and tensions are rising.

SACHS, Marilyn   A pocketful of seeds   1978
A young Jewish girl who lives in France grows rapidly to maturity during the German occupation when her parents and young sister are taken by the Germans. A moving story.

SERRAILLIER, Ian   The silver sword   1974
When a Polish family is separated, the children make a journey across Europe to find their parents. This still remains one of the finest stories of World War II.

SHEMIN, Margaretha   The little riders   1972 
Johanna, living in Holland, discovers that even enemy soldiers are human.

SOMMERFELT, Aimee   Miriam    1973
This well told story of two teenage girls in wartime Oslo tells how racial prejudice affects their lives.

SOUTHALL, Ivan     Fly west
The author put up his age to enlist, and in this book, tells the story of the war, and the people he served with, in the incredible Sunderland Flying Boats.

STREATFIELD, N   When the siren wailed
A Cockney family is separated during the London Blitz.

SWINDELLS, Robert  Hurricane summer  1997
It's WWII and Jim has a new friend, a fighter pilot. 

TAYLOR. Marilyn  Faraway home  1999
Based on true events. Karl and Rosa escape from Nazi-occupied Vienna to Northern Ireland on a Kindertransport. They are sent to a farm with other Jewish refugees. But war is never far away, especially when Belfast is bombed without warning.

TREADGOLD, Mary   We couldn't leave Dinah
An adventure story of the attempted Nazi invasion of an island off the coast of England.

WALSH, Jill PATON   The Dolphin crossing
Pat and John helped with the rescue of the British Army from Dunkirk. Setting off at dawn in a borrowed boat, they had to make some terrible decisions.

WALSH, Jill PATON   Fireweed
A survival story about two young people during the bombing of London.

WATKINS, Yoko Kawashima  So far from the bamboo grove
A fictionalised autobiography in which seven year old Yoko escapes from Korea to Japan after the end of World War II.

WESTALL, Robert Blitzcat 1989
The journey of a lost cat, trying to find her way home, through the heart of the war, and into the hearts of people she meets.

WESTALL, Robert The machine gunners 
A group of teenagers find a crashed German bomber, decide to keep the machine gun, and build a hideout. But there is trouble to follow, including a German soldier stumbling upon the shelter and offering information on the gun in exchange for help in escaping.

ELLIS, Debororah Parvana, Parvana's journey 2002
Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan, impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest. 

MARK, Jan The Hillingdon fox 1993 
Series: Plus  To check

ADAMS-SMITH, Diana. Katie in Kuwait 1994
When her father's job takes the family from New Zealand to Kuwait, fifteen-year-old Katie must cope with a culture very different to her own; and when the Iraqis invade she finds herself fleeing for safety with her Kuwaiti boyfriend. Suggested level: junior secondary [SCIS review]

LAIRD, Elizabeth  Kiss the dust 1994
Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 Fiction, Refugees, Kurds in Iran

WESTALL, Robert  Gulf  1993  to check

ANTLE, Nancy The longest war 1998
Nancy Antle wrote this story about Lisa and her mother after discovering there was little written for young readers about life later on for women who served in the military in the Vietnam War.

FILIPOVIC, Zlata   Zlata's diary; a child's life in Sarajevo 1995  [949.7]
FRANK, Anne    The diary of Anne Frank

Jumping to heaven; Stories about refugee children
Based on the true experiences of refugee who have emigrated to Australia. Sad, scary, thought-provoking and sometimes funny, above all they are stories of courage and hope.

McKay, Fiona War-torn real life in battle zones  1997 [True Stories ]
Life in this century's many wars -Vietnam, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Israel and of course the two world wars. All depict 'life turned upside down'. Artist George Gittoes' paintings and diary entries are included. 

AUER, Martin and Klages, Simone  The blue boy 1992
 Originally published as: Der Blaue junge, 1991  
Alone and fearful Blue Boy, orphaned by war, roams his planet, spurning others, arming himself against further hurt. Only when he visits the old man in the moon does he throw away his gun. It is disturbing that the message for peace is obscured until at least three quarters of the way through the story. The child who reads to the end will hopefully get the message, albeit, in bleak terms, but some youngsters may think that Blue Boy's arming himself was his best and only protection. This picture book should be discussed with any young child who reads it. [B M Richardson L- MP  SCIS]

CREW, Gary and TAN, Shaun   Memorial   1999
Explores memories and memorials of WWI, WWII and the Vietnam War.

FOX, Mem  Feathers and fools

HEFFERNAN, John  My dog 2001 
Refugees, Bosnian

INNOCENTI, Roberto   Rose Blanche 
When a German girl discovers a concentration camp near her home, she takes food daily to the children there until, near the end of the war, she is killed in crossfire. Not for the fainthearted.

MATTINGLEY, Christobel  The angel with the mouthorgan
A picture book in which two children listen to their mother's memories of wartime, culminating in how she came to have a special Christmas ornament about to be placed on the tree.

MORIMOTO, Junko   My Hiroshima   1990
Junko stayed home because of a stomach ache and experienced the dropping of the atom bomb. Years later, she returned to see students living a peaceful life on the same spot.

MARUKI, Toshi   Hiroshima No Pika   1982

TONKIN, Rachel   What was the war like Grandma? 1995

VIVAS, Julie    Let the celebrations begin
A picture book showing children in a concentration camp making their own toys.

RICHTER, Hans Peter   I was there
Hitler has come to power and children throughout Germany are joining the Hitler Youth movement. The narrator and Heinz are enthusiastic, but Gunther only participates because of pressures on himself and his family. Set in the turmoil and terror of Nazi Germany, this is an authoritative, understated, first-person account of the day-to-day events and attitudes of the Third Reich. Horn Book (also Friedrich, on the destruction of a Jewish family)

Peace education in Edna's themes

Magpies The source
SCIS
The Carol Hurst literature site  1997
TAYLOR, Anne A comparitive study of juvenile fiction dealing with the second world war IASL Conf  82
World War I: A select list of fiction in Scan NSW Department of Education Library Services, 1983
World War II theme reading. NSW Department of Education Library Services, 1981