Fiction 

Let sleeping dogs lie / Mirjam Pressler ; translated by Erik J. Macki.  After a school trip to Israel, Johanna discover's that her German grandfather acquired a clothing store during the Nazi regime according to the anti-Semitic laws of the Third Reich rather than starting it himself as her family has always stated. She struggles with whether to keep silent or to question her family's history. PHS.

The diary of Pelly D / L.J. Adlington.  When Toni V, a teenage construction worker on a futuristic colony, finds the diary of a teenage girl whose life has been turned upside-down by holocaust-like events, he begins to question his own beliefs. PHS.

On the wings of heroes / Richard Peck.  A boy in Illinois remembers the homefront years of World War II, especially his two heroes--his brother in the Air Force and his father, who fought in the previous war. PHS.

Escaping into the night / D. Dina Friedman.  Thirteen-year-old Halina Rudowski narrowly escapes the Polish ghetto and flees to the forest, where she is taken in by an encampment of Jews trying to survive World War II. PHS.

Johnny and the bomb / Terry Pratchett. Thirteen-year-old Johnny Maxwell acquires the neighborhood homeless woman's shopping cart when she is injured and discovers that its contents have the ability to send him back in time from 1996 to 1941 England. PHS.  

Tamar / Mal Peet. In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family. PHS.

 The eleventh man / Ivan Doig.  Driven by the memory of a fallen teammate, TSU's 1941 starting lineup went down as legend in Montana football history, charging through the season undefeated. Two years later, the "Supreme Team" is caught up in World War II. Ten of them are scattered around the globe in the war's various lonely and dangerous theaters. The eleventh man, Ben Reinking, has been plucked from pilot training by a military propaganda machine hungry for heroes. He is to chronicle the adventures of his teammates, man by man, for publication in small-town newspapers across the country like the one his father edits. Ready for action, he chafes at the assignment, not knowing that it will bring him love from an unexpected quarter and test the law of averages, which holds that all but one of his teammates should come through the conflict unscathed.

Nick of time / Ted Bell. Nick McIver is no ordinary boy, fighting pirates, beating Nazis at their own game, and traveling through time.

The boy in the striped pajamas : a fable / by John Boyne. (review from Ms. Hill's Book Blog) This is one of those audiobooks that you don't want to listen to because you know how it's going to end. But, still, you just have to finish it! At least the 4 CDs went quickly, and the interview with the author at the end was an added bonus--Irish accent!  Bruno is a little 9-year-old boy living in Berlin during World War II. But we have to read between the lines a lot in the novel, because Bruno doesn't always "get" what's going on around him. For example, his father, the Kommandant, moves his family to "Out-with" where a lot of people where striped pajamas and live on the other side of the fence. Bruno has no friends to play with and finally makes a friend alongside the fence. The two boys strike up a special friendship, which ends with Bruno climbing under the fence to explore what it's like inside the camp. Humph. Well, this will go on my Holocaust reading list, for sure.

The whirlwind / Carol Matas Ben flees Nazi Germany only to find himself in a battle for his life and his soul.

Elephant run / Roland Smith. Nick endures servitude, beatings, and more after his British father's plantation in Burma is invaded by the Japanese in 1941, and when his father and others are taken prisoner and Nick is stranded with his friend Mya, they plan a daring escape on elephants, risking their lives to save Nick's father and Mya's brother from a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

A coming evil / Vivian Vande Velde. During the German occupation of France in 1940, thirteen-year-old Lisette meets a ghost while living with her aunt who harbors Jewish and Gypsy children in the French countryside.

The Welsh girl / Peter Ho Davies (Review from Ms. Hill's Book Blog) This historical novel started out with such promise. And, from a literary standpoint, it probably delivered. But I didn't like the multiple stories and didn't see how they came together.  The Welsh girl, Esther, works in a pub, has an alcoholic father, a dead mother, and the family takes in evacuees from the city during World War II. The English government sets up a German POW camp next to her dad's pasture and this provides tons of excitement for the community. She is drawn to Karsten, a young German POW who speaks English, has an affair with him, and tells him about how she became in the family way.  The second plot line is about Rotheram, a German 1/2 Jew who doesn't claim his Jewish heritage. He is an English interrogator sent to question Rudolf Hess in Wales. And I'm so glad I'm not the only one who didn't feel that this fit into the novel. I loved the idea of Hess in the novel. I found myself searching websites to see if this stuff was true, but it didn't fit in with Esther.  From Bookmarks Magazine: "Yet while they praised the book's complicated character portraits and its complex themes, many felt that the Rotheram-Hess subplot, while fascinating, was tangential to the novel's main triangle. "  So, this book is written beautifully. Love the characterization, description of the Welsh countryside, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't fit together good enough for me.

Dream when you're feeling blue : a novel / Elizabeth Berg.     As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front, meat is rationed, children participate in metal drives, and Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller play music that offers hope and lifts spirits. For Kitty, a confident, headstrong young woman, the departure of her boyfriend and the lessons she learns about love, resilience, and war will bring a surprise and uncover a secret, and will lead her to a radical action on behalf of those she loves that will change the Heaney family forever. The lifelong consequences of the choices the sisters make are at the heart of this superb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.

Mudbound : a novel / by Hillary Jordan  Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.  PHS. Alex Award.  

Skeletons at the feast : a novel / Chris Bohjalian.  As Hitler's Third Reich crumbles, an aristocratic Prussian woman and her child flee west away from the approaching Russian army. Eventually they form an unlikely alliance with a Jewish man escaping from the concentration camps.

Your eyes in stars : a novel / by M.E. Kerr. In their small New York town, two teenaged girls become friends while helping each other make sense of their families, neighbors, and selves as they approach adulthood in the years preceding World War II. PHS.

Emil and Karl / Yankev Glatshteyn ; translated by Jeffrey Shandler. In Vienna, Austria, in 1940, two nine-year-old boys, one Jewish and one Aryan, are classmates and best friends when events of the Nazi occupation draw them even closer together as they fight to survive and escape together. PHS.

Summer of my German soldier / Bette Greene.  Sheltering an escaped German prisoner of war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Arkansas. PHS.

The garden / by Carol Matas.  After leading a group of Jewish refugees to Israel after World War II, sixteen-year-old Ruth joins the Haganah, the Jewish Army, and helps her people fight to keep the land granted to them by the United Nations.  PHS.

Postcards from no man's land / Aidan Chambers.  Alternates between two stories: contemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother as part of a trip to honor his grandfather who died in a nearby town in World War II, and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experiences of British soldiers' attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation and her affair with one of them. PHS. 

Soldier X / Don Wulffson.  In 1943 sixteen-year-old Erik experiences the horrors of war when he is drafted into the German army and sent to fight on the Russian front. PHS. 

Sisterland / Linda Newbery.  When Hilly's grandmother becomes ill with Alzheimer's disease, her family is turned upside down by revelations from her life during World War II. PHS.

Yellow star / by Jennifer Roy  From 1939, when Syvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland's Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation. PHS.

David and Jonathan / Cynthia Voigt   The relationship between two close friends, Henry and Jonathan, changes when Jonathan's cousin David, a victim of the Holocaust, comes to live with David's family. PHS.

Dawn / Elie Wiesel ; translated from the French by Frances Frenaye. Elisha, a young Jewish Holocaust survivor now living as a terrorist in British-controlled Palestine, awaits dawn, when he has been ordered to kill a captive English officer. PHS.

Code Talker : a novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two / Joseph Bruchac.  After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.  PHS.

B for Buster / Iain Lawrence. In the spring of 1943, sixteen-year-old Kak, desperate to escape his abusive parents, lies about his age to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and soon finds himself based in England as part of a crew flying bombing raids over Germany.  PHS.

Milkweed : a novel / Jerry Spinelli. He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham. He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw, who steals food for himself and the orphans, and who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels. He wants to be a Nazi someday, with tall, shiny jackboots and a gleaming eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. PHS.

Catch-22 / Joseph Heller.  Catch-22 took the war novel genre to a new level, shocking us with its clever and disturbing style. Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen.  PHS. 

Flygirl / Sherri L. Smith.  During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

The steel wave : a novel of World War II / Jeff Shaara   "The Steel Wave," the second book in Jeff Shaara’s proposed World War II trilogy, covers a key period of the war, January-September 1944, months during which plans for the Normandy Invasion were finalized and a successful invasion of France allowed Allied troops to begin the push that would ultimately rid France of the occupying German army.

Four steps to death / John Wilson. Novel about the Battle of Stalingrad.  PHS.

Color of the sea / John Hamamura.  Raised in Japan and Hawaii, Sam Hamada has been trained in the ways of the samurai. After graduation Sam strikes out for California and falls in love for the first time, with a beautiful young woman named Keiko. But then the Japanese attack Peal Harbor, igniting the war and making Sam, Keiko, and their families enemies of the state.  Drafted into the U.S. Army, sent on a secret mission, Sam’s very identity both puts his life at risk and gives him the strength he needs to survive. Taking us from the lush Hawaiian Islands of the 1930s to the wartime world of madness in Hiroshima, Color of the Sea is the unforgettable story of one Japanese boy’s coming-of-age.PHS.   Alex Award.

London calling / Edward Bloor. Seventh-grader Martin Conway believes that his life is monotonous and dull until the night the antique radio he uses as a night-light transports him to the bombing of London in 1940. PHS.

 Eyes of the emperor / Graham Salisbury.  Following orders from the United States Army, several young Japanese American men train K-9 units to hunt Asians during World War II.

General George Patton : Old Blood and Guts / Alden Hatch.  Biography.  PHS. 

The book thief / by Markus Zusak.  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. PHS.

Nonfiction 

I will plant you a lilac tree : A memoir of a Schindler's list survivor / Laura Hillman.  Presents the true story of a young girl from a Polish ghetto who was sent to a series of concentration camps and survived the war after being placed on Schindler's List, finally marrying a fellow survivor. PHS.

The diary of Petr Ginz 1941-1942 / edited by Chava Pressburger ; translated from the Czech by Elena Lappin.  Petr Ginz's diary: September 19, 1941-February 23, 1942 -- Family photos -- Petr Ginz's diary: February 24, 1942- -- The last meeting -- Writings from Theresienstadt -- Notes to Petr Ginz's diaries -- Acknowledgments -- The fates of those in Petr's diary -- Drawings.  PHS

 I am a star : child of the Holocaust / Inge Auerbacher ; with illustrations by Israel Bernbaum.  The author's reminiscences about her childhood in Germany, years of which were spent in a Nazi concentration camp. Includes several of her original poems. PHS.  

Left for dead : a young man's search for justice for the USS Indianapolis / Peter Nelson.  Recalls the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at the end of World War II, the navy cover-up and unfair court martial of the ship's captain, and how a young boy helped the survivors set the record straight fifty-five years later.  PHS. 

The Marines in World War II : from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay / Christopher J. Anderson.  Presents an illustrated history of the role of the Marines during World War II. PHS.  

Oskar Schindler / Bruce Thompson, book editor.  A collection of biographical essays. PHS.

Ordinary men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland / Christopher R. Browning. PHS. 

Heroes of the Holocaust / by Susan Glick.   Profiles six individuals, some Jewish and some Gentile, who acted heroically in opposing the Nazi persecution of Jews in what came to be known as the Holocaust. PHS.

Hitler Youth : growing up in Hitler's shadow / Susan Campbell Bartoletti. By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, 3.5 million children belonged to the Hitler Youth. It would become the largest youth group in history. Bartoletti explores how Hitler gained the youth's loyalty, trust, and passion. Her research includes telling interviews with surviving Hitler Youth members as well as those who resisted the movement. PHS.

Weapons of war.  Discusses the weapons, tank combat, U-boat activities, fighter planes, and campaigns of World War II. PHS.

The greatest generation / Tom Brokaw  PHS. 

Good morning : but the nightmares never end / by Charlie Dukes.  Local author.  Autobiography.  PHS.  

Hiding to survive : stories of Jewish children rescued from the Holocaust / Maxine B. Rosenberg. First person accounts of fourteen Holocaust survivors who as children were hidden from the Nazis by non-Jews. PHS.

Maus I : a survivor's tale : my father bleeds history / Art Spiegelman. A graphic novel memoir of Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and about his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his story, and history. PHS.

Battling in the Pacific : soldiering in World War II / Susan Provost Beller  The day of infamy -- Fighting back -- Serving in the Pacific -- Winning on land -- Winning at sea -- Winning in the air -- Prisoners of war -- Ultimate weapon -- Winners and losers.  PHS.

Albert Einstein : the miracle mind / Tabatha Yeatts. A legendary physicist -- Beginnings -- School days -- The path to higher education -- Life at the Polytechnic -- Trying to build a future -- A miracle year -- From place to place -- Gaining notoriety -- Life with Einstein -- World citizen -- Before and after World War II -- The final years.  PHS.