100 years on from the start of World War I, we’ve been thinking about some of the best children’s books addressing themes of war and conflict in sensitive, informative and innovative ways.
Take a look below..
BACK HOME by MICHELLE MAGORIAN: Age 12+. World War II has just ended and twelve-year-old Rusty comes back home to Britain after being evacuated to the US. The greyness and bleakness of life in England is a shock, but even worse is adapting to the strict discipline of her family, including a brother she’s never met, after the warmth and openness of her adopted American family.
CARRIE’S WAR by NINA BAWDEN: Age 9+. Albert, Carrie and young Nick are war-time evacuees whose lives get so tangled up with the people they’ve come to live among that the war and their real families seem to belong to another world.
DUSK by EVE EDWARDS: Age 12+. When Helen, a young hard-working nurse, meets aristocratic artist Sebastian, she doesn’t expect to even like him, let alone fall in love. But against the troubled backdrop of wartime London, an unlikely but intense romance blossoms. And even the bloody trenches of the Somme, where they are both posted, cannot diminish their feelings for each other.
GOING SOLO by ROALD DAHL: Age 9+. When he grew up, Roald Dahl left England for Africa – and a series of dangerous adventures began. From tales of plane crashes to surviving snake bites, Going Solo tells the story of Roald Dahl’s time in the RAF and his extraordinary life before becoming the world’s number one storyteller.
GOODNIGHT MISTER TOM by MICHELLE MAGORIAN: Age 12+. Young Willie Beech is evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. A sad, deprived child, he slowly begins to flourish under the care of old Tom Oakley. Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award.
HEROIC by PHIL EARLE: Age 12+. ‘For the past five weeks I’d prayed that I’d never see my brother’s name spelt out in poppies. In the weeks that followed I often wished I had.’ When Jammy returns from Afghanistan a very different man to the one who left, it’s his brother Sonny who is left to hold things together.
HOW I LIVE NOW by MEG ROSOFF: Age 12+. Daisy is sent from New York to England to spend a summer with cousins she has never met. And, as a dreamy English summer progresses, she finds herself caught in a timeless bubble. But their lives are about to explode. Falling in love is just the start of it. War breaks out – a war none of them understands, or really cares about, until it lands on their doorstep. Daisy’s life is changed forever – and the world is too.
NOBLE CONFLICT by MALORIE BLACKMAN: Age 12+. Years after a violent war destroyed much of the world, Kaspar has grown up in a society based on peace and harmony. But beyond the city walls, a vicious band of rebels are plotting to tear this peace apart.
STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN LEAVE by JOHN BOYNE: Age 9+. The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield’s father promised he wouldn’t go away to fight – but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn’t know where his father might be, other than that he’s away on a special, secret mission.
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS by JOHN BOYNE: Age 12+. Nine-year-old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution or the Holocaust. All he knows is that he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no-one to play with. Until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas.
THE GREAT ESCAPE by MEGAN RIX: Age 7+. Robert and Lucy Edwards love their pets more than anything; but the threat of the Second World War forces them to flee to Devon – leaving their animals behind.
Please note: due to their theme, the content of some of these books may be unsettling for younger children
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