‘Why Isn’t Dad at Home?’: The Books Helping Ukrainian Children Process the War

When Alina Otzemko’s husband joined the Ukrainian Army after Russia invaded Ukraine more than four years ago, she found herself facing questions no parent rehearses. How would she tell her son, Yurii, who was then 1½ years old, why his father no longer came home? How to explain the charred buildings and blown-out bridges he saw from the car window? And harder still, how to explain war to a child?

As the years passed, answers began to take shape in her mind, and Ms. Otzemko set out to turn them into a children’s book that would tell the story of war through Yurii’s eyes. “It felt like a great way to make life easier for other parents trying to explain to their children what war is,” Ms. Otzemko, a 31-year-old psychologist, said in an interview. “There wasn’t any book like this.”

Her book, “Why Isn’t Dad at Home?,” takes readers into Yurii’s world during wartime, including describing his worries when “planes started flying over the house” and his visit to his father near army bases where there were “no toys” but plenty of “flashlights, mice and big pistols.”

By mid-2024, the book was ready for publication. Ms. Otzemko asked her husband to write the foreword. “But he didn’t have time,” she said. “On June 7, he was killed.”

Now, with no preparation, Ms. Otzemko had to tell Yurii his father was gone. As she steadied herself, she began writing a follow-up book: “Why Did Dad Die?”

Ms. Otzemko’s books are just a couple among many published in Ukraine since the war began, all aimed at helping children and their parents cope with its trauma. Their subjects include the anguish of family separation, the upheaval of exile, and the terror of bombardments and the devastation they bring.

Together, the books tell the story of a society profoundly reshaped by more than four years of full-scale war. In their pages, children encounter weapons whose names have entered everyday language and learn terms like “veterans,” “paratroopers” and “air defenses.” The stories also instill them with a new sense of patriotism shaped by the experience of defending their country from Russia.

Perhaps most important, these books help children confront fraught topics like death, destruction and fear through a language they can grasp.

“They actually give you a framework for processing,” said Emily Finer, a senior lecturer at the University of St. Andrews who teaches children’s literature, noting that many of the books use animals and magical figures to help navigate experiences that could otherwise be overwhelming.

Ms. Finer said she had counted 196 new titles since the war began. Similar books appeared during past conflicts, she noted, but never at this scale. “As a cultural phenomenon, it’s without historical precedent,” she said.

One reason for the surge, Ms. Finer said, is that Ukrainian parents today know that unaddressed trauma comes at a cost, having grown up with the legacy of decades of Soviet oppression that silenced discussion of Ukrainians’ suffering. They do not want to repeat that pattern and “want better understanding and good mental health for their children,” she said.

One of the first books released after Russia invaded, “Battle for the City,” by Volodymyr Chernishenko, tackled the question on every parent’s mind at that time: How do you explain that war has begun?

In the story, an unnamed peaceful Ukrainian city is thrown into chaos when hulking military machines with menacing grins approach and begin raining down rockets on it. Rescue comes from a Ukrainian fighter jet, known as Ghost, that destroys the tanks from above. The name evokes the legend of the “Ghost of Kyiv,” a pilot rumored to have downed numerous Russian planes in the war’s early days.

Iryna Bilan, a telecommunications manager, said she had chosen the book for her two sons, Artem and Mark, because it reminded her of the battle for Kyiv, their home city, which Russian troops partly encircled in the war’s early weeks.

Ms. Bilan, 38, said her sons had cried a lot as they turned the pages and learned that Ghost, after saving the city, was ultimately destroyed by a Russian missile. But she saw in this tragic ending an opportunity to open a difficult conversation about soldiers dying while defending the country, a topic her sons frequently hear about on the radio and television, she said.

Another book Ms. Bilan said she often read with her children was “Rocket the Raccoon and Other Heroes” by Yevheniia Zavalii. Using stories of animals affected by the war, it gives voice to children’s emotions.

One tale follows a lion, Bretzel, who fears the bombardments but refuses to admit it, convinced he must appear strong.

Ms. Bilan said she turned to this story after harrowing nights of bombardments on Kyiv. “Through books, we can live through it,” she said of the trauma. “So my children don’t store it deep inside, so it doesn’t linger in the background and keep them from living, from being children.”

On a recent morning in a primary school in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv where Russian forces killed some 300 residents during a brief occupation in early 2022, one of its directors, Nataliia Cheredniuk, staged a theatrical reading of her book, “Ommm. The Spirit of the Irpin Forest.” The book recounts the Russian attack on the town through the eyes of a magical forest spirit who protects it, summoning floodwaters and winds to drive away the invaders.

“Are you glad the little forest spirit became our guardian?” she asked the 20 or so students gathered in a small classroom. “What would you wish for him?”

“That he would make it so the war never started,” one child answered.

“Let the war end,” another said.

Ms. Cheredniuk said that “what is most valuable is that, with this fairy tale, children talk about the war” rather than keeping their feelings bottled up.

With the war in its fifth year, it is the only reality many children in Ukraine have ever known, and a source of everyday curiosity.

After major Russian air attacks on Kyiv in late 2022, Ms. Bilan said her 10-year-old son, Artem, began asking about the weapons that Ukraine used to defend itself. Knowing the Ukrainian Army has the means to protect the country’s capital “helps him have hope,” she said.

So she bought Artem books about fighter jets, missiles, drones and fire arms, the names of which he almost knows by heart now.

“I definitely remember that one of them is a surface-to-air missile system,” Artem said on a recent afternoon at his family’s apartment, flipping through the pages of the books on missiles.

Sometimes, Ms. Bilan said, they even discuss the trajectories of Russian ballistic missiles and how Ukraine’s U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems can intercept them.

Lera Burlakova, a 40-year-old communications officer and war veteran, said she used the books to teach her 7-year-old son, Timur, about every aspect of the war, not just the weapons, but also its history and how it has reshaped society. “I want him to grow up as a true Ukrainian patriot,” she said.

She bought Timur “Little Travel Book. Armed Forces of Ukraine,” a children’s encyclopedia covering everything young readers need to know about the Ukrainian Army. Each page explores a different topic, such as Ukraine’s strike campaign against the Russian Black Sea fleet and the growing presence of women in the military.

Timur’s favorite page is about war veterans, a nod to his mother. It shows a woman with a prosthetic leg and a man hugging a cat he found on the front line. Right beside it is a page on the different types of drones that Ukraine has used in the war.

Perhaps the hardest subject of all is the loss of loved ones. Ms. Otzemko, the psychologist, said it took her two months to tell her son, Yurii, that his father had died. At first, she said, he was in denial, convinced she must have been mistaken because his dad had promised to come back. Gradually, however, reality sank in. Watching a friend at kindergarten reunite with his father returning from the front, Yurii began to understand that his own dad would never come home.

Ms. Otzemko recounts all these stages in her second book, seen through Yurii’s eyes, which she accompanied with gentle illustrations showing Yurii staring into the open sky as he comes to terms with his father’s absence.

Ms. Otzemko said she had aimed for “very simple, childlike explanations” in her book so children could identify themselves in the pages while parents could find a way to navigate complex emotions with their children.

“This is essentially a ready-made guide on how to talk to children about death,” she said.