BPL Teens

From the Trojan War to the US Civil War to Iraq.

Mariano Azuela
The Underdogs 1996
A novel of the Mexican Revolution.

Grigorii Baklanov
Forever Nineteen 1989
19-year-old Soviet lieutenant on the front lines during World War II.

Robert Cormier
Heroes 1998
A grenade blows the face off 18-year-old Francis Cassavant. Set during World War II.

Stephen Crane
The Red Badge of Courage 1994
Considered a classic novel of the US Civil War.

Timothy Decker
The Letter Home 2005
Letters from the trenches of World War I.

Will Eisner
Last Day in Vietnam 2000
A memoir by the man who has been called “the most influential comic artist of all time.” In graphic novel format.

C.S. Forester
African Queen 1935
Set during World War I in Central Africa.

William R. Forstchen
We Look Like Men of War 2001
Born a slave, Samuel Washburn fought in the bloody Civil War Battle of the Crater.

Sherry Garland
In the Shadow of the Alamo 2001
Drafted into the Mexican Army, 15-year-old Lorenzo Bonifaci marches with Santa Ana.

Vittorio Giardino
No Pasarán! 2000
Set during the Spanish Civil War. A graphic novel.

Gipi
Notes for a War Story 2007
War in an unidentified Balkan country. In graphic novel format.

Graham Greene
The Quiet American 1973
Set in the early 1950s in Saigon, Vietnam during the end of the First Indochina war.

Dennis Hamley
Without Warning 2007
A working-class English girl witnesses the horrors of war and decides to become a nurse on the front line. Set during World War I.

Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms 1929
Frederic Henry is an American serving in an Italian ambulance unit during World War I.

Karen Hesse
Aleutian Sparrow 2003
An Aleutian Islander recounts her internment during World War II in an American camp designed to “protect” the population from the invading Japanese.

Tony Hillerman
Finding Moon 1995
Set primarily in Vietnam, during the fall of Saigon in 1975. Features self-described “third-rate” newspaperman Moon Mathias.

Tess Uriza Holthe
When the Elephants Dance 2002
Set in the Philippines, during the Japanese occupation during World War II.

Dean Hughes
Search and Destroy 2005
Recent high school graduate Rick Ward joins the Army and goes to Vietnam.

Charles Yale Harrison
Generals Die in Bed 2002
The author was a machine-gunner in World War I. Originally published in 1930.

Joseph Heller
Catch 22 1955
The classic, satirical novel set during World War II.

Homer Hickam
The Keeper’s Son 2003
U.S. Coast Guard Commander Josh Thurlow keeps an eye out for Nazi submarines in the Outer Banks, off the coast of North Carolina, during World War II.

Frances Itani
Deafening 2003
The story of Grania O’Neill, who is deaf, and her hearing husband, who is a medic. Set in Ontario, Canada, during World War I.

Anthony Lappé
Shooting War 2007
Anti-corporate blogger Jimmy Burns sets off for Iraq to become an honest war correspondent—and is rapidly traumatized.

Gus Lee
Honor and Duty 1993
West Point prepares new officers during the early days of American involvement in Vietnam.

Ella Leffland
Rumors of Peace 1979
This is the story of a young girls coming of age in a small town in the San Francisco Bay Area during World War II.

Bobbie Ann Mason
In Country 1985
Teenaged Sam’s father died in Vietnam. She now lives in rural Kentucky with her uncle Emmett, a vet who may be suffering from Agent Orange poisoning.

Walter Dean Myers
Fallen Angels 1988
African American teenager Ritchie Perry does a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Walter Dean Myers
Sunset Over Fallujah 2008
Robin Perry, from Harlem, is sent to Iraq in 2003 as a member of the Civilian Affairs Battalion.

Tim O’Brien
Things They Carried 1990
Related short stories featuring soldiers in an American platoon during the Vietnam war.

Mal Peet
Tamar 2007
15-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the death of her grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Erich Maria Remarque
All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
The story of Paul Bäumer, a 19-year-old German soldier, who fought in trenches during World War I. Originally written in German. First published in German in 1928.

Joe Sacco
Fixer 2003
A story of post-war Sarajevo and Bosnia. A graphic novel.

C.A. Schmidt
Useful Fools 2007
A 15-year-old Peruvian boy becomes caught up in the war after Senderistas bomb the clinic his mother runs.

Eric Shanower
Age of Bronze 2001-
The story of the Trojan War. In graphic novel format.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
August 1914 1972
Russia’s World War I experience—by the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist.

Dalton Trumbo
Johnny Got His Gun 1982
Classic anti-war novel set in World War I. First published in 1939.

Lutz van Dijk
Damned Strong Love 1995
Stefan K., a Polish teenager, falls in love with a German soldier. Set in occupied Poland during World War II.

Brian K. Vaughan
Pride of Baghdad 2006
Based on the true story of 4 lions that escaped the Baghdad zoo during the American bombing in 2003. A graphic novel.

Kurt Vonnegut 1988
Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children’s Crusade: a Duty-dance with Death
Time-traveling Billy Pilgrim witnesses the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II. First published in 1968.

Robert Westall
Gulf 1996
Set during the 1990-1991 Gulf War. A British teenager tells the story of his younger brother, who is somehow psychically linked to an Iraqi soldier named Latif.