It’s never too soon to start making a list and checking it twice – especially when it’s a list of books for military families. A list of this year’s new books includes gift ideas for kids and adults and features a diverse cast of characters: a patriotic rat, bilingual airplanes, letter writers, diplomats, moms, dads, soldiers, sailors, Marines and Muammar Gaddafi. It’s quite a list. Read on and start making yours.

“Maggie the Military Rat” by Monica Voicu Denniston is a picture book about a patriotic rat who wants to serve her country somehow. She becomes discouraged when she’s told she isn’t big enough to join the military. She’s also unwelcome in the kitchen and too small to write letters to deployed troops. However, Maggie eventually finds she is just the right size for friendship with a little girl whose military father is deployed. This hopeful book emphasizes the importance of friendship and encourages children with the message that their contributions matter, even if they seem small to the big world.

Air Force pilot Teri Weber is the author of a new picture-book series called “Operation Aviation” (“Operación Aviación”) about military aircraft. Each of the three stories was released this year in both English and Spanish, with translations by Gabriella Aldeman. “Fly with Mytai” (“Vuela con Maytai”) is about an F-22 Raptor training with his team. “Toad the Tanker” (“El Tanquecito” introduces a KC-135 Stratotanker providing fuel to other aircraft. “Moose on a Mission” (“La Misión de Alce”) features a C-17 Globemaster carrying cargo around the world. The books also show other types of aircraft in action and how they interact and support one another. Readers in both languages are treated to rhyming stories in every book in this series.

“The Islanders: Shipwrecked,” by Mary Alice Monroe and Angela May is the third book in a middle-grade adventure series featuring military kid Jake Potter. In this new book, Jake and his friends, Macon and Lovie, learn valuable lessons about survival and friendship when an afternoon boat trip turns dangerous. “Shipwrecked” is the sequel to NYT bestsellers, “The Islanders” and “The Islanders: Search for Treasure.” This chapter-book series is notable for its well-rounded portrayal of a military child’s life, encompassing more than deployments and moves.

“Never ‘Goodbye.’ Always ‘See You Later!’ ” by Valerie McNulty is a personalized love letter to every military child, the author says. This picture book is written as a letter from a deploying parent to a child and explores the parent’s emotions as well as the child’s. The reassuring story can be helpful to military families navigating long-distance relationships by starting conversations and validating children’s feelings about deployment.

“My Dearest Bea: Love Letters from the USS Midway 1951-1952,” by Peyton Roberts, is a book about a real-life letter writer, the author’s grandfather. In her book, Roberts notes that the hardship of military life sometimes bears unexpected gifts. Peyton has taken one of those gifts—a trove of love letters from her sailor grandfather to his beloved wife at home—and turned it into another. Weaving her own reflections and her grandfather’s letters into a poignant expression of love and loss, the author has created an homage to the grandparents who made her childhood “magical.”

In “Broadway in Benghazi: Comedy, Tragedy, and Diplomatic Drama in Gaddafi’s Libya,” author Anna Marie Linville says of military life, “Every time you move, it is as if you have died and been reincarnated somewhere else. You spend a year or two, or if you’re lucky, maybe three in one place … suddenly, you are raptured away to a new universe where the rules have changed, but you have not. You are forced to adapt or go mad.” Linville’s memoir is certainly about adaptation, especially to life in Libya when her Army husband was assigned to be defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli in 2008. It is sometimes about madness, like the anarchy that followed Gaddafi’s fall, and the deaths of Americans at Benghazi, friends and colleagues of the author and her husband. There’s even some reincarnation as Linville discovers new life with each transition. Above all, it’s the story of individuals, Linville and a varied cast of real-life characters whose lives intersect her own and whose stories she tells skillfully. For this and for its front-row perspective of historic events, this book is hard to put down.

“Military Brat,” by Pete Masalin is a coming-of-age story of a young boy in a military family. The narrative follows his journey to become a cadet at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina and eventually a member of the United States Marine Corps. The protagonist, Finn Makenin, grows through his adventures, experiences, and moves. Drawing on his own experiences as a “military brat,” Citadel graduate, and Marine veteran, Masalin spins an uplifting tale that will be familiar and encouraging to readers in military families.

In “The Wives,” author Simone Gorrindo says a fellow Army wife told her, “Life is not necessarily easier together, but it is better.” In this memoir, Gorrindo’s personal story takes her from a full life as a book editor in New York to lonely months as a military wife in small-town Georgia. Her loneliness is exacerbated by her husband’s deployments, and some of this story is painful to read. But a hopeful thread runs through it—a thread of friendship. The author’s kinship with other Army wives illustrates the ways military spouses with little in common come together to make life better, even when they can’t make it easier. This is the encouragement the wives in Gorrindo’s story give to one another, and this book offers the same gift of encouragement to its readers.

Terri Barnes is a book lover, book editor and author of “Spouse Calls: Messages from a Military Life,” based on her long-running column in Stars and Stripes. Find her online at terribarnesauthor.com.