These resources are available in the school library. You can use the following key as a guide for the level of reading ability required by each text.

 Easy

 Average

 Advanced 

 

 

No Safe Place (2010) Deborah Ellis.

No Safe Place is a novel that depicts the experiences of many child and youth refugees. Abdul is forced to flee his home in Baghdad, and ends up in a filthy, overrun refugee camp, trying to find a way to get to England. While this is a fictional work, it is well-researched, and a good example of conflict and refugees, and an example of how this experience can be represented in a text. Since it is a novel, it is located in our fiction collection. The fiction collection is organised alphabetically by author surname.

 

 

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow (2005) Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow provides an excellent example and discussion of propaganda. It contains interviews with twelve former members of the Hitler Youth, the youth organisation run by Hitler and the Nazi Party as part of Germany’s World War 2 operation. It provides some startling insights into the psychology of war and its impact on both an individual and societal level. This is a non-fiction work located on the shelves with the Dewey number 943.086.

 

From Nothing to Zero: Letters from Refugees in Australia’s Detention Centres (2003) Janet Austin (ed.)

From Nothing to Zero: Letters from Refugees in Australia’s Detention Centres is a non-fiction text, consisting largely of letters written by refugees in detention in Australia. This text provides first-person accounts of the hardships experienced by refugees, even after leaving a war zone – often this can just be the start of their problems as they search for a new place where they are able to live safely and legally. This book is an eye-opening account of real refugees experiences of trying to seek safety in Australia, and how helpful (or not) the international community is to citizens whose countries have been impacted by war. This non-fiction volume is located on the shelves at 325.210.

 

 

Zlata’s Diary (1993) Zlata Filipovic

Zlata’s Diary is a personal account of growing up in a conflict zone. Zlata Filipovic, then eleven years old, writes in her diary as her city, Sarajevo, comes under siege and descends into war. Her personal diary, initially intended to record daily life and gossip, becomes a record of the war as life is reduced to hiding in the basement, dealing with food shortages, and hearing news of friends or acquaintances killed. This is a straightforward and honest account of war, told from the perspective of a young person whose childhood is interrupted by conflict. This non-fiction account is located on the shelves at 949.7. There are also several copies available through the English faculty which you can access by consulting your English teacher.