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A READING LIST OF WAR

Bragg, Rick I Am a Soldier, Too (B Lyn)

Former POW and media darling Private Jessica Lynch recounts to award-winning journalist Rick Bragg the terrifying tale of her capture, imprisonment, and rescue in Iraq and the impact of her ordeal on her close-knit, loving family in rural West Virginia.

Cormier, Robert The Chocolate War (YA Cor)

A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

Cormier, Robert Heroes (YA Cor)

After serving in the United States Army in World War II and having his face blown off by a grenade, Francis, a young soldier, returns home hoping to find--and kill--the former childhood hero he feels betrayed him.

Frazier, Charles Cold Mountain* (HF Fra)

Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered.

Marsden, John Tomorrow, When the War Began (YA Mar)

What would you do if you came home from a camping trip in the desert to find the houses in your neighborhood abandoned, food rotting, your pets dead, and the electric power cut off? A group of Australian teenagers finds just this situation when they return home after a week spent in the bush. When one of them finds a fax from his father warning them to hide out for safety, they decide to reconnoiter the fairground. What they see-armed soldiers guarding an enormous tent into which the people have been herded-forces the reluctant understanding that the country has been invaded. What now? A rescue attempt with no weapons? Where can weapons and food be found while the group decides what their policy will be? Where will they hide? Are they the only ones free?  *(1st book in series; other books include: Dead of Night, A Killing Frost, Darkness Be My Friend, Burning For Revenge, Night Is For Hunting, Other Side of Dawn)

Heller, Joseph Catch-22 (F Hel)

Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him.

Katzenbach, John Hart's War (Mys Kat)

In John Katzenbach's spellbinding new novel, Hart's War -- a vivid and authentic murder mystery/legal drama set in a brutal German POW camp during World War II -- a black American flyer is on trial for butchering a racist prisonmate, and it's up to a Harvard Law student to uncover the grisly truth.

Mazer, Norma Fox Good Night, Maman (YA Maz)

Karin Levi’s world of family, school, and friends is torn apart when the German army occupies Paris in June of 1940. Karin and her brother, Marc, like Jews all over Europe, find themselves on the run, seeking safety wherever they can find it. When Marc obtains two coveted places aboard a ship bound for the United States, Karin knows that crossing the ocean means she may never see her beloved parents again. Yet she and Marc have little choice if they are to survive.

Mitchell, Margaret Gone With the Wind (HF Mit)

Gone With the Wind is the story of Scarlett O'Hara, a headstrong Southern belle who survives the hardships of the war and afterwards manages to establish a successful business by capitalizing on the struggle to rebuild the South. Throughout the book she is motivated by her unfulfilled love for Ashley Wilkes, an honorable man who is happily married. After a series of marriages and failed relationships with other men, notably the dashing Rhett Butler, she has a change of heart and determines to win Rhett back.

Paulsen, Gary Sarny (YA Pau)

Continues the adventures of Sarny, the slave girl Nightjohn taught to read, through the aftermath of the Civil War during which time she taught other Blacks and lived a full life until age ninety-four.

Sledge, E.B. With the Old Breed

Sledge enlisted out of patriotism, idealism, and youthful courage, but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and cruelty, the stench of death, and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still has nightmares about "the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa." But, as he also tellingly reveals, the bonds of friendship formed then will never be severed.

Trumbo, Dalton Johnny Got His Gun (F Tru)

This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives...This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome...but so is war.

Wolff, Virginia Bat 6 (YA Wol)

In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one sixth-grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface.

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