An unforgettable novel based on the life of Ricky Richard Anywar, who at age fourteen was forced to fight as a soldier in the guerrilla army of notorious Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony Soldier Boy begins with the story of Ricky Richard Anywar, abducted in 1989 to fight with Joseph Kony's rebel army in the Ugandan civil war (one of Africa's longest running conflicts). Ricky is trained, armed, and forced to fight government soldiers alongside his brutal kidnappers, but never stops dreaming of escape. The story continues twenty years later, with a fictionalized character named Samuel, a boy deathly afraid of trusting anyone ever again. Samuel is representative of the thousands of child soldiers Ricky eventually helped rehabilitate as founder of the internationally acclaimed charity Friends of Orphans. Working closely with Ricky himself, debut author Keely Hutton has written an eye-opening book about a boy’s unbreakable spirit and indomitable courage in the face of unimaginable horror. This title has Common Core connections.

Spencer Morgan And Dieter Hedrick, one American, one German, are both young and eager to get into action in the war. Dieter, a shining member of the Hitler Youth movement, has actually met the Führer himself and was praised for his hard work. Now he is determined to make it to the front lines, to push back the enemy and defend the honor of the Fatherland. Spencer, just sixteen, must convince his father to sign his induction papers. He is bent on becoming a paratrooper -- the toughest soldiers in the world. He will prove to his family and hometown friends that he is more than the little guy with crooked teeth. He?ll prove to his father that he can amount to something and keep his promises. Everyone will look at him differently when he returns home in his uniform, trousers tucked into his boots in the paratrooper style. Both boys get their wishes when they are tossed into intense conflict during the Battle of the Bulge. And both soon learn that war is about a lot more than proving oneself and one?s bravery. Dean Hughes offers young readers a wrenching look at parallel lives and how innocence must eventually be shed.

My Soldier Dad eloquently captures the essence of what it means to be a soldier, but also what it means to love a soldier. Told from a child's perspective, the story illustrates the grand scale of the military, the broad scope of various missions and operations, and the importance of a family's love and connectedness.

In 1962 when Tim Bazzett graduated from high school he'd had enough of academia and classroom drudgery, so he joined the army - and received an education he'd never imagined. Perhaps one of the most unlikely and inept citizen-soldiers since Gomer Pyle, Tim somehow survives the terrors and tribulations of basic training at "Fort Lost-in-the-Woods, Misery," and after further training in the mysteries of Morse code in Massachusetts and Maryland, the small-town innocent is launched overseas and into the larger world. In northern Turkey he finds himself a link in the outermost defenses of America during a Cold War he only imperfectly understands. There he sees poverty and hatred in the faces of children and is forced to confront his own faults and inner demons. Later on in Germany, no longer quite so innocent, he chases girls and dreams of being a rock star. But at the heart of Bazzett's narrative are the characters - the friends he makes along the way. For this is ultimately a book about friendship - and about growing up. In his first volume of memoirs, Bazzett made his Michigan hometown in the fifties come alive for all his readers. In Soldier Boy, his military experiences are made just as real. Get ready to laugh, and maybe cry a little too, as the irrepressible Reed City Boy rides again.

A 2020 Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year A 2020 Children's Book Council Notable Social Studies Book for Young People Over a quarter million underage British boys fought on the Allied front lines of the Great War, but not all of them fought on the battlefield—some fought beneath it, as revealed in this middle-grade historical adventure about a deadly underground mission. Secret Soldiers follows the journey of Thomas, a thirteen-year-old coal miner, who lies about his age to join the Claykickers, a specialized crew of soldiers known as “tunnelers,” in hopes of finding his missing older brother. Thomas works in the tunnels of the Western Front alongside three other soldier boys whose constant bickering and inexperience in mining may prove more lethal than the enemy digging toward them. But as they burrow deeper beneath the battlefield, the boys discover the men they hope to become and forge a bond of brotherhood. Secret Soldiers is another stunning story of strength, perseverance, and love from Keely Hutton. This title has common core connections.

"As a 15-year-old boy I fought briefly in a war. My fight was neither noble nor heroic. I saw the horrors that no 15-year-old boy should ever see. I came into war purely by happenstance, and survived it purely by luck." Gerhardt B. Thamm grew up on his grandfather's farm in Lower Silesia, the hinterlands of Germany. In early 1945 this land, near the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders, became a battleground. The Soviets captured Lower Silesia in February, and Thamm, like many of his Hitler Youth high school classmates, was conscripted to fight on the Eastern Front until the last few days of World War II, experiencing firsthand fearsome barbarity and atrocity. Thamm's family was deported from Silesia in 1946 to West Germany. Gerhardt Thamm arrived in the United States in 1948. The 17-year-old Thamm joined the U.S. Army the same year and served more than 20 years as an enlisted man. "Maybe, just maybe, I fought in this war to escape the barbarity. Maybe I wrote this book to still the memories."

The untold story of how Germany's child soldiers fought WWII, told through the personal lens of the author's father's rediscovered journal and meticulous historical research

On 28 June 1915, young James Martin sailed from Melbourne aboard the troopship Berrima – bound, ultimately, for Gallipoli. He was just fourteen years old. Soldier Boy is Jim's extraordinary true story, the story of a young and enthusiastic school boy who became Australia's youngest known Anzac. Four months after leaving his home country he would be numbered among the dead, just one of so many soldier boys who travelled halfway around the world for the chance of adventure. This is, however, just as much the story of Jim's mother, Amelia Martin. It is the heartbreaking tale of the mother who had to let him go, of his family who lost a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend. It is about Amelia's boy who, like so many others, just wanted to be in on the action.