Books like Year of the Jungle

A poignant look back at a traumatic year for Suzanne Collins as a first grader. Her healthy and vibrant father heads off to the Vietnam War, and little Suzanne has no concept of time, distance, and combat in a foreign land. You experience the horrors of war through the eyes of one so young and sheltered from the evils of the world. It introduces elementary children to the meaning of having a military parent and having little to no contact for prolonged periods of time, and the later shock of seeing your military parent so profoundly changed in appearance and behavior. It will take some planning to introduce students to the historical aspects of the Vietnam War to make this picture book understandable to them. For grades 1st and up.