Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a deep strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden

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. Carrie and Nick are billeted in Wales with old Mr Evans, who is so mean and cold, and his timid mouse of a sister, Lou, who suddenly starts having secrets.

Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman

What kind of a girl steals the clothes from a dead man's back and runs off to join the army?

A desperate one, that's who.

World been turned on its head by that big old war, and the army seemed like the safest place to be, until we was sent off to fight them Indians. And then? Heck! When Death's so close you can smell his breath, ain't nothing makes you feel more alive.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

One by one the boys begin to fall…

In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

Have you ever wondered what happened to the Five Children and It characters when the First World War began?

Cyril is off to fight, Anthea is at art college, Robert is a Cambridge scholar and Jane is at high school. The Lamb is the grown up age of 11, and he has a little sister, Edith, in tow. The sand fairy has become a creature of stories ... until he suddenly reappears. The siblings are pleased to have something to take their minds off the war, but this time the Psammead is here for a reason, and his magic might have a more serious purpose.

Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black by Marcus Sedgwick

Brothers Marcus and Julian Sedgwick team up to pen this haunting tale of another pair of brothers, caught between life and death in World War II. Harry Black, a conscientious objector, artist, and firefighter battling the blazes of German bombing in London in 1944, wakes in the hospital to news that his soldier brother, Ellis, has been killed. In the delirium of his wounded state, Harry's mind begins to blur the distinctions between the reality of war-torn London, the fiction of his unpublished sci-fi novel, and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Driven by visions of Ellis still alive and a sense of poetic inevitability, Harry sets off on a search for his brother that will lead him deep into the city's Underworld. With otherworldly paintings by Alexis Deacon depicting Harry's surreal descent further into the depths of hell, this eerily beautiful blend of prose, verse, and illustration delves into love, loyalty, and the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood as it builds to a fierce indictment of mechanized warfare.

Salt to the Sea by Ruth Sepetys

While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known January 30, 1945 sinking in the Baltic Sea by a Soviet submarine of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety from the advancing Red Army. The ship was overcrowded with more than 10,500 passengers — the intended capacity was approximately 1,800 — and more than 9,000 people, including 5,000 children, lost their lives.

Sepetys crafts four fictionalized but historically accurate voices to convey the real-life tragedy. Joana, a Lithuanian with nursing experience; Florian, a Prussian soldier fleeing the Nazis with stolen treasure; and Emilia, a Polish girl close to the end of her pregnancy, converge on their escape journeys as Russian troops advance; each will eventually meet Albert, a Nazi peon with delusions of grandeur, assigned to the Gustloff decks.

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

Alone and fending for themselves in a Poland devastated by World War Two, Jan and his three homeless friends cling to the silver sword as a symbol of hope. As they travel through Europe towards Switzerland, where they believe they will be reunited with their parents, they encounter many hardships and dangers. This extraordinarily moving account of an epic journey gives a remarkable insight into the reality of a Europe laid waste by war.

The Enigma Game by Elizabeth Wein

A German soldier risks his life to drop off the sought-after Enigma Machine to British Intelligence, hiding it in a pub in a small town in northeast Scotland, and unwittingly bringing together four very different people who decide to keep it to themselves. Louisa Adair, a young teen girl hired to look after the pub owner's elderly, German-born aunt, Jane Warner, finds it but doesn't report it. Flight-Lieutenant Jamie Beaufort-Stuart intercepts a signal but can't figure it out. Ellen McEwen, volunteer at the local airfield, acts as the go-between and messenger, after Louisa involves Jane in translating. The planes under Jamie's command seem charmed, as Jamie knows where exactly to go, while other squadrons suffer, and the four are loathe to give up the machine, even after Elisabeth Lind from British Intelligence arrives, even after the Germans start bombing the tiny town.

White Eagles by Elizabeth Wein

Summer 1939. With Europe on the brink of war, eighteen-year-old Kristina Tomiak has been called up to join the White Eagles, Poland's valiant air force. When the Nazis reach the town where she is based, Kristina makes a daring escape, but she doesn't realise that she's carrying a stowaway in her plane. Will Kristina be able to navigate the most challenging flight of her life and reach safety amid the turmoil of war?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with her foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall. The book is narrated by Death.

The Great War: Stories Inspired by Items from the First World War

An anthology of stories inspired by objects from the First World War. It is a collection of stories by bestselling authors, each inspired by a different object from the First World War. Each object illuminates an aspect of life during the war, and each story reminds us of the millions of individual lives that were changed forever by the fighting.

The Gulf by Geraldine McCaughrean

Geraldine McCaughrean (1951-) says that her motto is ‘Do not write about what you know, write about what you want to know.’ She is perhaps best known for her novel The Kite Rider, chosen by the Booktrust as one of the 100 Best Books for 12-14 year olds. ‘The Gulf’ was first published in 1999.

The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

The War Poems by Wilfred Owen

Poets of the First World War by Nicola Barber

A look at the life and work of five of the most significant writers of World War I. Men who were able to use their talent and skill with language to convey sights, sounds and emotions that the rest of the world away from the front line could barely imagine.

Infinite Hope: A Black Artist's Journey from World War II to Peace by Ashley Bryan

In May of 1942, at the age of eighteen, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army.He endured the terrible lies white officers told about the black soldiers to isolate them from anyone who showed kindness—including each other. He received worse treatment than even Nazi POWs. He was assigned the grimmest, most horrific tasks, like burying fallen soldiers…but was told to remove the black soldiers first because the media didn’t want them in their newsreels. And he waited and wanted so desperately to go home, watching every white soldier get safe passage back to the United States before black soldiers were even a thought.

Poets of the First World War by Neil Champion

This biography of the war poets of WWI is part of a series of biographies of important artists, writers and other creative people that examines their social background, aspects of their daily life, and examines the ways in which their work reflected or shaped social and cultural changes.

Diary of Anne Frank

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.

In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.

The Poetry of War 1914-1989, ed. Simon Fuller

An anthology which gathers together poetry spanning some of the major conflicts of the 20th-century - World War I and World War II, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Ireland and the Falklands - and includes previously unpublished material.

'Commando' by Chris Terrill

The writer is a journalist but he has spent a lot of time ‘embedded’ with the army. ‘Embedded’ means that he lived with a group of soldiers while reporting on a war from their point of view. This is an extract from Commando, a diary of his experience of completing the notoriously challenging Royal Marine (Commando) training.

Bombs and Blackberries by Julia Donaldson

World War II has been declared and the Chivers' children are sent to the safety of the countryside. They are delighted to be brought back home to Manchester when it looks like the Germans aren't going to invade after all. But the air-raid siren goes off and this time it's frighteningly real.

Journey's End by R.C. Sherriff

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as 'useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war', R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End is an unflinching vision of life in the trenches towards the end of the First World War.

Set in the First World War, Journey's End concerns a group of British officers on the front line and opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new eighteen-year-old officer fresh out of English public school, joins the besieged company of his friend and cricketing hero Stanhope, and finds him dramatically changed.