Europe

Industrial Revolution
Avi. //**Beyond the Western Sea: The Escape from Home. **// Orchard, 1996. It’s 1851 and among the masses abandoning their Irish homes to escape famine, disease, and poverty are 12-year-old Patrick and his older sister, Maura, who intend to join their father in America. As they pass through the port city of Liverpool, they join an assortment of England's own unfortunates and malcontents. Among them is 11-year-old Laurence, young English lord who is running away from home to escape the cruelty of his brother and the shame of a theft he has committed. Patrick and Laurence meet only briefly, but long enough to seal their fate. All three strong characters find connection and relationship before they even disembark as they face the unsavory characters that abound on the streets of Liverpool. Reading level 5.5. (Erin)

Ibbotson, Eva. //**The Star of Kazan**//. Dutton, 2004. Golden-haired, peasant-faced foundling Annika has been raised by cook Ellie and housekeeper Sigrid to be "the best-trained child in Vienna," and she's won the hearts of the professors for whom Ellie and Sigrid work. But despite her love for her adoptive family and her friends, Annika is thrilled when a beautiful aristocrat appears, claiming to be her mother, sweeping her off to a new life in a crumbling castle in northern Germany. Annika is determined to make the best of things, and it takes a while for her to realize that her new "family" has many secrets, most of them nasty. She finds that the only people she can relate to are the servants, especially free-spirited Zed. Winding through this story is a mystery involving a chest of worn costumes and alleged junk jewelry left to Annika by an old woman she had befriended in Vienna. Reading level 6.8. (Erin)

Whelan, Gloria. //**Angel on the Square**//. HarperCollins, 2003. In 1913 Russia, twelve-year-old Katya eagerly anticipates leaving her St. Petersburg home along with her older cousin Misha to join her mother, who is a lady in waiting in the household of Tsar Nicholas II. The ensuing years bring world war, revolution, and undreamed of changes to her life. Reading level 8.1. (Jan)

WWI
Lawrence, Iain. **//Lord of the Nutcracker Men//. ** Laurel Leaf, 2003. Ten year old Johnny Briggs, whose father is fighting in France, is given a set of nutcracker tin army men and starts to believe that the battles his toy armies are fighting in are somehow controlling the outcome of the Great War. Grades six and up. (Christie)

Hamley, Dennis. **//Without Warning: Ellen's Story 1914-1918//**. Candlewick Press, 2006. After helping her older brother, Jack, recover from the trauma of war, Ellen becomes a nurse on the frontlines, where she experiences firsthand the horrors of the Great War. Reading level YA. (Colleen)

Morpurgo, Michael. **//Private Peaceful.//** Scholastic, 2004. This narrative of a young English soldier, 18 year old Thomas Peaceful, is about the world left behind and the daily horrors of trench warfare: the mud, the rats, the gas attacks, and the slaughter. Tommo’s narrative alternates between flashbacks to his boyhood in the English countryside and the realities he is currently facing in his foxhole the night of June 24th, 1916. At 15, Thommo lied about his age in order to follow his beloved older brother, Charlie, to fight in France. Now, nearly two years later, his older brother, Charlie, is sentenced to be shot at dawn for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Charlie's crime was refusing to leave the injured Tommo. The night before the coming horror, Tommo relives it all: growing up as a poor farm boy in a happy family, and how he was always close to Charlie and to their brain-injured brother, Joe and how Tommo and Charlie even loved the same girl, who Charlie marries. Tommo also remembers the brutality from the landlord who threatened the family with eviction if Charlie didn't enlist as well as the cruel army sergeant who tried to break Charlie's spirit. The juxtaposition of Tommo's memories of his childhood with the horrors of World War I trench warfare creates a unique perspective of “the Great War”. Ages 14 and up. (Erin)

Bagdasarian, Adam. **//The Forgotten Fire//.** Laurel-Leaf books, c2002. This book tells the story of a young Armenian boy and his family during the Turkish-Armenian conflict prior to WWI. After witnessing terrible brutality, Vahan flees his homespending two years searching for some type of safety. The story is based on the author’s grandfather’s experiences. 1050L ( Mary Ann)

Spillebeen, Geert. Translated by Terese Edelstein. **//Kipling’s Choice//**. Houghton Mifflin, c2005. Rudyard Kipling’s eighteen-year-old son, John, joined the British army to fight in WWI. In this fictionalized account, John recalls his life as he lies mortally wounded in his first battle. 820L Grades 7-10 (Mary Ann)

Remarque, Erich Maria. Translated by A. W. Wheen. **//All Quiet on the Western Front//.** Fawcett Publications, c1958, c1967. The novel describes the experiences of a group of young German soldiers during WWI. 830L Grades 9-12 (Mary Ann)

WWII
Smith, Sherri. **//Flygirl//**. Penguin/G.P. Putnam's sons, 2009. Ida Mae Jones is a young, black woman who dreams of flying, but race and gender prevent her from obtaining a pilot's license even though her father taught her to fly. When WWII begins, she worries about her brother and wants to help her country so she follows her dream and joins the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) by changing her identity and passing herself off as white since she has light skin and good hair. Reading level YA. (Colleen)

Wulffson, Don L. **//Soldier X.//** Viking, 2001 Erik Brandt is a WWII veteran and teacher who is students see as a hero. In the epilogue and prologue, told from the point of view of the elderly Brandt, he confides that he did not fight for the Americans in WWII - he was a soldier in the German army. Erik was only sixteen and knew little about what Germany was fighting for. Drafted into Hitler's army in 1944, Erik was sent to the Eastern Front where he witnesses the horrors of war firsthand. On the field of his first battle, Erik makes a decision that will change his life forever. When he finds himself in a war hospital, recuperating from serious injuries, he feigns amnesia and meets his future wife. When the hospital is attacked the two young lovers escape, eventually making their way to Berlin. This novel is based on a true story and offers a lesser seen perspective of the war and the lives of those who fought in it. Grades 8 and up. (Caryn)

Holocaust
Bartolletti, Susan Campbell. **//Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow//.** Scholastic Inc., 2005. By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, there were 3.5 million children in the Hitler Youth. This narrative primarily focuses on its members but also profiles some of the group's dissidents and its Jewish targets. Hitler began his quest for dominance with young people, recognizing them as "a powerful political force" and claiming, "With them, I can make a new world." The portrait of individuals within the Hitler Youth who failed to realize that they served a mass murderer is convincing and it will allow readers to comprehend the circumstances that led to the formation of Hitler's youngest zealots. Recommended ages 9-12 but high schoolers would find it interesting, too. (Erin)

Boyne, John. **//The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Fable.//** David Fickling Books, 2006. This story of the Holocaust is told through the voice of nine-year-old Bruno, whose father is the commandant of Auschwitz. Because he doesn't understand much of what is happening, Bruno befriends one of the Jewish inmates. This leads to his own death in the gas chamber as he decides to join his friend on the other side of the fence. The book is at once both touching and horrifying. Interest Level: YA. [Excerpt from Library Media Connection (January 2007) courtesy of Follett TitleWave]. Recommended by Nancy.

Cheng, Andrea. **//Marika//**. Scholastic, 2002. Marika is six. Her world in Hungary is very ordinary; her biggest concerns are school and the wall dividing her home into two apartments: one for her father, the other for her mother, brother, and herself. Although her family is Jewish, they live like Christians, celebrating Christmas and going to mass. As she grows older, the war comes closer, and she begins to feel its effects. When she is 16, the Nazis take over the country, and she poses as the Catholic niece of a family friend. Deceptively simple, the story, told in first person, captures a child's life as she grows into the realization of the horrors around her. Marika is a well-realized and sympathetic character, believable in both her childlike concerns and her more adult fears as the war affects her directly. Her family is realistically flawed, especially her beloved father, who has an affair with a neighbor's wife, yet does everything he can to shelter Marika from harm. Grades 4-8. (Morgan)

Lasky, Kathryn. **//Ashes//**. Penguin Group (USA), 2010. It's Berlin in 1932 and thirteen year old Gaby is an avid reader of world literature, and annoyed that her math teacher confiscates her books. Her unease grows when SA troops of Hitler's private army start occupying the city, signaling a distinct shift toward repression and antisemitism. Gaby's father, an astrophysics professor and colleague of Albert Einstein, is troubled that Einstein's work is labeled "Jewish Physics" and Gaby's mother begins to fear for the safety of her Jewish friend, Baba. Although fascinated by her stylish literature teacher, Fraulein Hofstadt, Gaby withdraws from school after she presses Gaby to join the Hitler youth. Shops close, neighbors disappear, and Einstein flees as Gaby's sister becomes more seriously involved with her Nazi boyfriend. When book-burning threatens Gaby's precious books and the free-thinking they feed, Gaby and her family must make critical choices about their future. Ages 11 and up. (Erin)

Spinelli, Jerry. **//Milkweed//**. Knopf, 2003. This book is both a deceptively simple commentary about the Holocaust as well as a survival adventure seen through the eyes of an orphaned eight-year-old. Forced to steal food to survive, the boy, a Jew or a Gypsy, answers to various monikers, such as "Stopthief!" and "Poppynoodle," as he does not know his real name. Before long, he is marched to a Jewish ghetto, where he witnesses atrocities and processes his observations in poetic ways. As his fate, and that of the other ghetto inhabitants, plays out in the novel, the growing sense of evil is all encompassing. The hope raised by this unwanted child's innocence is the only thing that lessens the evil that is surrounding this book. Grades 6 and up. (Morgan)

Wolf, Joan M. **//Someone Named Eva.//** Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. When the Nazis came to Milada's home in Czechoslovakia, her grandmother told her to always remember who she was. Milada never realized how difficult it would be to keep that promise. Soon the 11 year old finds herself in a Lebensborn center in Poland where she is told that her appearance fits the Aryan ideal - blond hair, blue eyes, "right" sized features. She is given the name Eva and is placed with a German family where she is trained to become a perfect German citizen...and to forget that she was ever Milada from Czechloslovakia. Inspired by true events. Grades 5-8. (Caryn)

Yolen, Jane. **//The Devil's Arithmetic//**//.// Puffin, 1988. In this novel, Yolen attempts to answer those who question why the Holocaust should be remembered. Hannah, 12, is tired of remembering, and is embarrassed by her grandfather, who rants and raves at the mention of the Nazis. Her mother's explanations of how her grandparents and great-aunt lost all family and friends during that time have little effect. Then, during a Passover Seder, Hannah is chosen to open the door to welcome the prophet Elijah. As she does so, she is transported to a village in Poland in the 1940s, where everyone thinks that she is Chaya, who has just recovered from a serious illness. She is captured by the Nazis and taken to a death camp, where she is befriended by a young girl named Rivka, who teaches her how to fight the dehumanizing processes of the camp and hold onto her identity. When at last their luck runs out and Rivka is chosen, Hannah/Chaya, in an almost impulsive act of self-sacrifice, goes in her stead. As the door to the gas chamber closes behind her, she is returned to the door of her grandparents' apartment, waiting for Elijah. Grades 5-8. (Morgan).

Zusak, Markus. **//The Book Thief//**. Knopf, 2006. Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. It is 1939 when nine-year-old Liesel, on her way to a foster home in Molching, Germany, steals a book -- the first she's ever owned -- from a graveyard. From then through 1943, her life is chronicled in books stolen (from Nazi book burnings; from the mayor's wife), books given (by her foster parents, irascible Rosa and kindly Hans Hubermann; by Max Vandenburg, the Jew hiding in their basement), and books written (her own story, finished in that basement during a devastating air raid). As her relationships and beliefs deepen, Liesel grows into a tough, earnest heroine, convincingly ordinary with an extraordinary capacity for caring. Grades 9 and up. (Jan)