KS3 History - World War One: Books

A humorous fictionalized history set in Southeast Asia during the First World War, which centers on a lovable rogue in the form of Captain Julius Lauterbach of the German Imperial Navy and the ship that catapulted the Flashmanesque Lauterbach to accidental fame (and infamy), His Imperial Majesty's Emden. Follow the adventures of Lauterbach, a beer-guzzling, cigar-smoking filcher, a braggart and, above all, a survivor.

Fourteen-year-old Ted joins the Royal Navy in 1914 as a cabin boy. His duties include carrying ammunition to the guns. Ted takes part in the Battle of Jutland, when his ship is sunk, he survives but is taken as a Prisoner of War.

1915 Scotland. It begins with a group of teenagers from two families, friends despite their social differences, on a picnic on a beautiful sunny day. Mostly romance is on their minds, but the peace of the day is shattered by the sound of a plane flying overhead. An omen of how the reality of the war across the Channel is soon to tear them away from such youthful pleasures. All too soon the horror of what is to become known as The Great War engulfs them, their friends and the whole village.From the horror of the trenches, to the devastating reality seen daily by those nursing the wounded, they struggle to survive. They are luckier than some all but one return home but they know that nothing will ever be the same again.

It's 1917 and Billy Stevens is a telegraph operator stationed in Ypres. The Great War has been raging for three years when Billy finds himself taking part in the deadly 'Big Push' forward. He is shocked to discover that the bullets of his fellow soldiers aren't just aimed at the enemy....

1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancee is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters; there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles".

England, 1914. When recruiting officers come to her sleepy village and her brother enlists, Ellen knows that her life will never be the same again. She longs for something more than her life as a housemaid, at the beck and call of the toffs as her dad calls them. Ellen's brother returns home after losing a leg and through helping him, she realizes what she really wants to be - a nurse at the front. When her sweetheart is killed, it only makes her more determined to help. Despite huge opposition from her family, she goes to train in London, eventually fulfilling her dream by travelling to France and working in a field hospital till the end of the war.

One bright spring morning in the woods of France, a soldier, blinded by the war, is found by a little girl named Coco, and her older sister Marcelle. In return for their kindness, the soldier tells the sisters marvellous tales, each story connected to the keepsake he carries in his pocket: a perfect, tiny silver donkey. As the days pass and they struggle in secret to help the soldier reach home, Coco and Marcelle learn the truth behind the silver donkey, and what the precious object means: honesty, loyalty, and courage.

For three very different people brought together by their love for birds, life on the Queensland coast in 1914 is the timeless and idyllic world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. In another hemisphere civilization rushes headlong into a brutal conflict. Life there is lived from moment to moment. Inevitably, the two young men -sanctuary owner and employee - are drawn to the war, and into the mud and horror of the trenches of Armentieres. Alone on the beach, their friend Imogen, the middle-aged wildlife photographer, must acknowledge for all three of them that the past cannot be held.

Henry is heading up to stay with friends at Saint Helena Bay when his car breaks down just outside a country town. Forced to stay over in the town while his car is fixed, Henry is befriended by two local teenagers, Trot and Janine, and the enigmatic and very old Cecelia. To Cecilia Henry looks exactly like Andy Lansell, her fiance who left to fight in the Great War eighty years ago, and never returned. She shares with Henry her memories of Andy and lends him Andy’s diary. His car fixed, Henry heads off to Saint Helena Bay for a week of sailboarding with his friends, but his head is full of Andy’s story, which begins to unfold in parallel to Henry’s story. As Andy and his mates head inexorably towards the bloody tortuous Western Front, Henry and his mates face challenges, dangerous situations and tragedies of their own.

Farren is a country lad who is able to shoot, fish and sail. His brother Danny has gone to fight at Gallipoli; his father is a fisherman and his mother has recently died. Although Farren would dearly love to be fishing with his father, he must stay working at the pub where he is safe from the dangers of the sea. These dangers are brought home when a fierce gale whips up. Both his father and the deckhand are killed and their bodies washed ashore. Farren is alone. Farren eventually receives word that Danny has been wounded in action and is being sent home. Farren can hardly wait until Danny is better so that they can run the boat out and fish again, like the Foxes always have. The Danny who returns is not the same. His head injuries and his experiences in battle have changed him mentally and physically.

In 1914, Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the Tsar, leads a privileged life in the grand palaces of Russia. The First World War and the Bolshevik revolution are just about to erupt. With the royal family arrested and exiled to Siberia, the life Anastasia knows is swept away forever. Spanning the last four years of Anastasia's life, My Royal Story offers a fascinating insight into a childhood spent in one of Russian history's darkest hours.

As the enemy lurks in the darkness, Thomas struggles to stay awake through the night. He has lived through the terror of gas attacks and watched friends die by his side. But in the morning, Thomas will be forced to confront an even greater horror. As the minutes tick by, Thomas remembers his childhood spent deep in the countryside with his mother, his brothers, and Molly, the love of his life. But each minute that passes brings Thomas closer to something he can't bear to to think about--the moment when the war and its horrific consequences will change his life forever. -- British Library

In 1914, Joey, a young farm horse cared for by Albert the son of a farmer, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. He's on the front line, he's stood in front of bullets and shrapnel, and he's the bravest horse on the field. Surrounded by violence and loss, Joey does all he can to survive and see Albert again, and helps hundreds of wounded soldiers in the process.

Seventeen-year-old twins Alice and Jack work at the mansion of the Morland family - Alice as a chambermaid and Jack as a groom. With the outbreak of the First World War, Jack volunteers to join the army and their lives are changed completely. When Alice meets the progressive thinking Lorna Sidgwick, she decides that she too will volunteer to train as a VAD nurse. The newspapers report victories and the families at home think their men are heroes fighting for their King and Country. Alice and Jack soon discover that the experience of war is far from the adventures portrayed in newspapers. They see the reality of bungled decisions, maiming and disfigurement and the endless slaughter - all of which belong to some other war. In the four years of war they mature, maintaining their courage, sense of purpose and capacity to love.

Seventeen-year-old Greg's interest in photography draws him to a ruined mansion whose history becomes more personally relevant as he slowly discovers the tragic events that led to the destruction of the house during World War I. -- British Library

Fifteen-year-old Jack live with his mum in Scotland and along with his best friend Angus, attends a new, small school. Jack and Angus's favourite computer game is Point of Departure set in World War One. On Jack's birthday, the friends discover a secret room adjacent to the cellar where they spend their game-playing time and in it they find historical artefacts and books and equipment. It was Jack's father's workshop before he mysteriously left the family. When Jack and Angus show one of the historical artefacts to their history teacher Mr Pendelshape he takes boys to another secret workshop, in the school, where he explains that Jack's father is AWOL because he has perfected a time-travel machine and wants to change the past. When the boys and the teacher are attacked by those who want to prevent any meddling in time, Jack and Angus are able to escape via a time-machine into 1914. And so begins a dangerous chase from the dockyards of England to the rain-sodden trenches of the First World War. Their dilemma: Should they intervene? Their problem: Can they survive?

This is the story of two friends, Jack and Harry, both keen footballers, both recruited for the army and sent to fight in the trenches in the First World War. Award-winning author, James Riordan, brings to life the fear and horrors that both English and Germans went through as they fought each other in the trenches. The book ends with a moving account of the football match played in the Christmas truce of 1914.

The year is 1916. Inspired by the story of Edith Cavell, twins Floss and Doss decide it is time for them to do their bit for the war effort. Their brother and father are already away at war - and the girls get jobs at a local munitions factory. From there, Floss soon moves on to work at the hospital, and eventually goes overseas to work at a Field Hospital in France. There she is taken prisoner by the Germans and starts working behind enemy lines, nursing injured German soldiers and British prisoners. The novel follows the dramatic, and traumatic, wartime experiences of the two sisters.

It's 1914 and France is at war. 14-year old Pierre is desperate to help his country fight the Germans, but the only way he can sign up is if he has false identity papers. So when the opportunity arises, two years later, Pierre seizes it with both hands and opens the door from childhood into adulthood. But he finds that the world of war is a gruesome one and Pierre's dreams of glory soon fade when he finds out what life is really like in the trenches...

A soldier wakes up in a damp, dark basement. And he can't remember anything. He is tried and found guilty of cowardice, impersonating a fellow soldier and theft. As the verdict is passed and he learns that the death sentence awaits him, he remembers two things: that he took something from a dead man in the trenches, and that the name his accusers have been calling him is not his. With time slipping away, Chris Ransom must try to remember the events that have led him to this moment so that he can clear his name and save himself.

Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani live in the oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan at the beginning of World War I. Despite their religious and cultural differences they have loved each other since childhood, but their own tolerence does not protect them from others.

Fueled by anger at the death of his beloved older brother Hector in World War I, sixteen-year-old Edward abandons his father and their farm in Canada to enlist in Hector's batallion, and is sent to England for training. After proving that he can tame any wild horse, Edward is sent with the cavalry to Palestine to battle the Turks. A trooper's horse is the key to life and death in a cavalry charge, luckily, Edward has the extraordinary Buke, his true companion. He also has tender letters from Emily, a nurse and the cameraderie of his tent mates. Although Edward had set out on this journey seeking revenge, this is gradual toned by the horror of battle and the realisation that he has to fight to survive and this means he has to kill.

Thirteen-year-old Katie is an unwilling summer guest of her Halifax grandparents. All she wants to do is stay in her attic bedroom and brood over her new stepmother's pregnancy and how a baby might affect her life. Then she sees a shadow on her bedroom wall of an old-fashioned girl holding a flower. The girl, Lillie, reappears and shares her life with Katie, reaching across the years to her. Is she a ghost? As Katie searches for some evidence of the girl's presence, she discovers a package of letters from World War I that talk about British orphans who were sent to Canada as Home Children.

Thirteen-year-old Katie is an unwilling summer guest of her Halifax grandparents. All she wants to do is stay in her attic bedroom and brood over her new stepmother's pregnancy and how a baby might affect her life. Then she sees a shadow on her bedroom wall of an old-fashioned girl holding a flower. The girl, Lillie, reappears and shares her life with Katie, reaching across the years to her. Is she a ghost? As Katie searches for some evidence of the girl's presence, she discovers a package of letters from World War I that talk about British orphans who were sent to Canada as Home Children.

Napoleon Augustus Smythe is a courageous boy and more a researcher than a spy as the subtitle suggests, but his experience of war is greater than his military-obsessed family would ever guess. Napoleon is recruited in his local town library to be Battle Boy 005, a time-travelling operative who, protected by a computerised Simulskin, is sent to famous historical battles to solve mysteries, take photographs, and get DNA samples from participants for the Warrior Gene Bank. His contact in the library, Miss Perdu, provides him with all sorts of technological wizardry but the way to the past is through a book...big hint about the wonders of reading here? In this second adventure he is sent to discover who shot down the famous German fighter pilot, Von Richthofen, best known as the Red Baron. A twist is that the Baron is kind to Napoleon, causing him to reflect on the vagaries of war.

Sarah is over 90 years old now, but she can still remember when she was a young teenager scavenging for gulls eggs or nettles to have for dinner. A wounded flying ace appears from nowhere to rescue a friend from the rising tide, and from then on their fates are linked. She finds his tales of courage under fire enthralling, and she is fascinated by his romance with a local girl. Then, in a particularly awesome storm the sea invades her house, ripping off the roof, as well as desolating the entire village, and the lives of everyone change forever.

JUNE 1917 Mustard gas! A feeling of panic hit me and I scrambled to get my respirator over my face before the killer gas got into my mouth and nose and burnt my lungs. It burned everything it touched. Eyes. Skin. And it always found a way in. Like now, I could feel where it had crept up inside the sleeves of my uniform and the skin on my arms felt like it was on fire. I threw myself into a muddy hole, pushing my arms under water, but I knew it was already too late. I stumbled to my feet, saturated, with the weight of wet mud clinging to me. I couldn't move. I couldn't see...

Henni Octon is a curious girl and the German family who had built the wonderful house in Cauldron Bay where she had holidayed the previous Easter (The Ballad of Cauldron Bay) sticks in her mind because there seems to be a mystery about them. She leaves ‘a message in a bottle’, actually a note on a box of dusty books under the house for possible relatives of Leopold Schmidt, the boy who seems to have been about her age back in 1915, and, astonishingly, gets a reply. By coincidence a young German documentary maker, just as curious as Henni, finds the note and passes it on to his nephew in Berlin whose name is Leo Schmidt—no relation to the Cauldron Bay family. So begins an email correspondence between Henni and Leo in which a mystery is solved and justice, belated and only partial, is achieved.

Set in Canada and the battlefields of France and Belgium, Three-Day Road is a mesmerizing novel told through the eyes of Niska—a Canadian Oji-Cree woman living off the land who is the last of a line of healers and diviners—and her nephew Xavier. At the urging of his friend Elijah, a Cree boy raised in reserve schools, Xavier joins the war effort. Shipped off to Europe when they are nineteen, the boys are marginalized from the Canadian soldiers not only by their native appearance but also by the fine marksmanship that years of hunting in the bush has taught them. Both become snipers renowned for their uncanny accuracy. But while Xavier struggles to understand the purpose of the war and to come to terms with his conscience for the many lives he has ended, Elijah becomes obsessed with killing, taking great risks to become the most accomplished sniper in the army. Eventually the harrowing and bloody truth of war takes its toll on the two friends in different, profound ways. Intertwined with this account is the story of Niska, who herself has borne witness to a lifetime of death—the death of her people.

It is 1914 and 16 year old Sydney is bursting to get a crack at the Kaiser. Fired up by the military recruitment campaigns and the brave men going off to fight in the Great War, he runs away to enlist but soon finds himself in a frontline trench where reality - and the rats - begin to bite. This is a young soldier's honest portrayal, told through letters home and a frank journal, of his enthusiasm for the 1914 recruitment campaign, and joining up -- followed by the disillusionment and degradation of soldiering in the trenches of World War I.

C is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world. After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he's recruited for a mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of which eventually carries Serge to a fitful--and perhaps fateful--climax at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb...