This has been an ANZAC week on the blog, from acknowledging  ANZAC Day itself on Monday, through ANZAC-themed poetry on Tuesday, to yesterday and the famous ANZAC Memorial penned by M. Kemal Atatürk in 1934.

On Monday, I reflected on the dearth of ANZAC novels in the century that has elapsed since WW1, and the 71 years since WW2 ended. However, I’ve continued to check out what’s available and am pleased to have identified a few more ANZAC-themed children’s novels that have been published over the past few years.

These include Pippa Werry’s Best Mates (2014), a children’s picture book that tells the story of three friends who enlist in the ANZAC corps and end up fighting at Gallipoli.

David Hill has written two ANZAC-themed books for Junior readers (9-12 year olds.) My Brother’s War (2012) follows two NZ brothers in WW1, one of whom enlists as a soldier, while the other is a conscientious objector—paths that lead both of them to the trenches in France.

Enemy Camp (2016) focuses on NZ’s WW2 history, and the incident at the Featherston prisoner-of-war camp that resulted in the deaths of one guard and forty-eight Japanese prisoners.

Susan Brocker’s Brave Bess and the ANZAC Horses (2010) is a fictionalized account of Bess, one of only four NZ horses shipped overseas with WW1 mounted troops that returned home to NZ. 1914: Riding Into War (2014), also by Susan Brocker, follows three young men in a mounted rifle regiment that are separated from their horses when they are sent to Gallipoli from North Africa, in 1914.

So definitely a few more books for children than I could initially identify, exploring and interpreting NZ’s ANZAC history through fiction.