Book picks similar to
I Was Only Nineteen by John Schumann


picture-book
australian
picture-books
war

Harlem Hellfighters


J. Patrick Lewis - 2014
    Two thousand strong, these black Americans from New York picked up brass instruments—under the leadership of famed bandleader and lieutenant James Reese Europe—to take the musical sound of Harlem into the heart of war. From the creators of the 2012 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Honor Book, And the Soldiers Sang, this remarkable narrative nonfiction rendering of WWI -- and American -- history uses free-verse poetry and captivating art to tell century-old story of hellish combat, racist times, rare courage, and inspired music.

Sea Prayer


Khaled Hosseini - 2018
    Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city's swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone. Impelled to write this story by the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed upon the beach in Turkey in September 2015, Hosseini hopes to pay tribute to the millions of families, like Kurdi's, who have been splintered and forced from home by war and persecution, and he will donate author proceeds from this book to the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund lifesaving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the UNHCR, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

Stone Angel


Jane Yolen - 2015
    In this emotionally rich story, a little girl and her family live happily in Paris until Nazi soldiers arrive during World War II. She and her family must flee or risk being sent to a concentration camp, so they run into the woods, where they meet resistance fighters. But they're still not safe. They must cross tall mountains and sail in a rickety boat to England. Yet the whole time they're struggling to survive, the little girl thinks of the stone angel near their apartment in Paris and imagines it watching over her family. Offering a never-before-told story of the Holocaust, Jane Yolen returns to the material she mined in the award-winning THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC. Filled with sorrow, hope, comfort, and triumph, this gorgeously illustrated book is sure to become a modern classic–offering adults a perfect vehicle with which to share a difficult subject.Praise for STONE ANGEL:* "This story provides a wonderful addition to materials about World War II and the Holocaust, and is appropriate for even the gentlest of readers."--School Library Connection *STARRED*

Stormy Seas: Stories of Young Boat Refugees


Mary Beth Leatherdale - 2017
    For hundreds of years, people have left behind family, friends, and all they know in hope of a better life. This book presents five true stories about young people who lived through the harrowing experience of setting sail in search of asylum: Ruth and her family board the St. Louis to escape Nazism; Phu sets out alone from war-torn Vietnam; José tries to reach the U.S. from Cuba; Najeeba flees Afghanistan and the Taliban; Mohamed, an orphan, runs from his village on the Ivory Coast. Aimed at middle grade students, Stormy Seas combines a contemporary collage-based design, sidebars, fact boxes, timeline and further reading to produce a book that is ideal for both reading and research. Readers will gain new insights into a situation that has constantly been making the headlines.

Memorial


Gary Crew - 1999
    A young boy tells the moving story of the tree, as related by his great grandfather, grandfather, and father, each of whom has participated in wars over the years. Interweaving themes of war, memory, and conservation, this book blends a sensitive text with brilliantly original collage art by Shaun Tan to bring an important lesson to young readers.

Unforgotten


Tohby Riddle - 2012
    It's a book about light and dark, doubt and faith, friendship and compassion.Riddle’s representations of the strangeness of the urban landscape evoke a sense of movement that has been captured – and stilled momentarily – as if by the lens of an old-fashioned camera. Whenever we spend time with it, the spare text and mesmerising images have a way of calming the room around us as if there issomething peaceful settling over us as we read. It is a triumph of wonderful quiet beauty.Unforgotten feels like a classic in the making with its thought-provoking edgy surrealism, plea for compassion and sense of the absurd, while leaving lots of room for individual, imaginative interpretation."Reading this book is like being quietly ushered into another dimension by winged strangers, a place beyond the tread of normal earth-bound language. Ephemeral as a feather, timeless as a rock, and as true as both, Unforgotten is a magical experience."– Shaun Tan, author of The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain


Peter Sís - 2007
    Through annotated illustrations, journals, maps, and dreamscapes, Peter Sí­s shows what life was like for a child who loved to draw, proudly wore the red scarf of a Young Pioneer, stood guard at the giant statue of Stalin, and believed whatever he was told to believe. But adolescence brought questions. Cracks began to appear in the Iron Curtain, and news from the West slowly filtered into the country. Sí­s learned about beat poetry, rock 'n' roll, blue jeans, and Coca-Cola. He let his hair grow long, secretly read banned books, and joined a rock band. Then came the Prague Spring of 1968, and for a teenager who wanted to see the world and meet the Beatles, this was a magical time. It was short-lived, however, brought to a sudden and brutal end by the Soviet-led invasion. But this brief flowering had provided a glimpse of new possibilities—creativity could be discouraged but not easily killed. By joining memory and history, Sí­s takes us on his extraordinary journey: from infant with paintbrush in hand to young man borne aloft by the wings of his art.

The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman


Raymond Briggs - 1984
    It satirises the Falklands War. The book presents the story of the war in the format of a picture book for young children. It is written in a simple style with large, brightly coloured illustrations. Neither the Falkland Islands, the belligerent countries, nor their leaders are named in the text. Instead, the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the Argentine dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri are presented as a pair of metal monsters who send men to fight over a "sad little island" populated by a few shepherds who eat nothing but mutton. The old woman (who is "not real [but] made of Iron") derives from Thatcher's nickname "the Iron Lady", while the General (who is "not real [but] made of Tin Pots") derives from the slang term "tin-pot general" or "tin-pot dictator", meaning a petty authoritarian type. The book mentions several ways in which soldiers (who were "all real men, made of flesh and blood ... not made of Tin Pots or Iron") were killed or maimed; the pictures accompanying these parts of the text are monochrome pencil sketches, as opposed to the full-colour caricatures in the rest of the book. Following the victory by the soldiers of the Old Iron Woman, there are various celebrations, to which the maimed are not invited in case their appearance spoils the fun (a reference to actual occurrences at Falklands War memorial events).[citation needed] The refusal of either side to admit responsibility for civilian casualties is satirised with the statement that three of the islanders were killed, but that "nobody was to blame".

A Year of Borrowed Men


Michelle Barker - 2015
    Gerda knows they are supposed to treat the men as enemies, but it doesn t seem fair. Can t they invite them into the warm house for one meal? What harm could it do to be friendly? Writing from her mother s childhood memories of Germany during World War II, Michelle Barker shares the story of one family s daring kindness in a time of widespread anger and suspicion. Renne Benoit s illustrations bring warmth to the era, showing the small ways in which a forbidden friendship bloomed: good food, a much-loved doll, a secret Christmas tree. Family photographs and an Author s Note give further insight into the life of Gerda, the little girl who proved that it isn t so far from Feinde (enemies) to Freunde (friends)."

Hitler's Daughter


Jackie French - 1999
    It began on a rainy morning in Australia, as part of a game played by Mark and his friends. It was a storytelling game, and the four friends took turns weaving tales about fairies and mermaids and horses. But Anna's story was different this time: it was not a fairy tale or an adventure story. The story was about a young girl who lived during World War II. Her name was Heidi, and she was Hitler's daughter.As Anna's story unfolds, Mark is haunted by the image of Hitler's daughter. He wonders what he would have done in her place if he had known his father was an evil man leading the world into a war that was destroying millions of lives. And if Mark had known, would he have had the power and determination to stop him?

Young Dark Emu


Bruce Pascoe - 2016
    Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the reader to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived – a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes, and an understanding of the environment and its natural resources that supported thriving villages across the continent. Young Dark Emu - A Truer History asks young readers to consider a different version of Australia’s history pre-European colonisation.

The Good Son: A Story from the First World War, Told in Miniature


Pierre-Jacques Ober - 2019
    He also wanted to be good soldier, but the whole world was at war and he couldn't be both.A story told entirely with photographs of miniature figurines.

The Rabbits


John Marsden - 1998
    Uses rabbits, a species introduced to Australia, to represent an allegory of the arrival of Europeans in Australia and the widespread environmental destruction caused by man throughout the continent.

Year of the Jungle


Suzanne Collins - 2013
    Suzy spends her year in first grade waiting for her father, who is serving in Vietnam, and when the postcards stop coming she worries that he will never make it home.

Triple Sticks: Tales of a Few Young Men in the 1960s


Bernie Fipp - 2010
    The author assures us it is not!Three years before they came together, four young American men left their fraternities and college campuses for an adventure exceeding their imaginations. Wanting something more than the draft and unknown to each other, they chose Naval Aviation as the next step in their lives. Generally, they were better than their navy peers, all qualifying for high performance aircraft to be flown from steel decks over foreign seas. They would become the pointy end of the stick in aerial battles over North Vietnam, the most heavily defended patch of real estate in the history of aerial warfare. They were to do this in 1967, the year in which Naval Aviation experienced its greatest losses.These four young men, now Lieutenants Junior Grade, United States Navy, were ordered to Attack Squadron 34 to fly A4 Skyhawks into combat. They were assigned Junior Officer's stateroom 0111 aboard USS Intrepid, a venerable aircraft carrier with a distinguished history. This "bunkroom" better known to them as Triple Sticks was the repository for a log (in navy terms) or journal written by these four young aviators. Forty years later this log was the genesis of this memoir.In the lethal environment over the northern reaches of North Vietnam or ashore in the Officer's clubs and bars of Asia, the writing brings to life wonderful humor, bizarre behavior, vivid aerial battles, uncommon loyalty, anger, frustration and respect. One survived or did not according to his skill and luck.