Some of the most shocking images from the crisis in Syria have been photographs of children: the body of a drowned toddler lying on a Turkish beach, the expressionless 5-year-old boy from Aleppo, shellshocked, bloodied and ash-covered, after being pulled from the rubble of a bombed building.

Now, a number of children’s books authors, moved by these images and other news reports, are taking on the subject in fiction to humanize and personalize the ongoing conflict for young readers. More than a dozen new and forthcoming titles feature young Muslim refugees as protagonists, ranging from picture books aimed at readers as young as 4 to a cluster of novels for middle and high school students that delve into the murkier aspects of the refugee crisis. Some of the books touch on challenging issues like the rise of the Islamic State and the sectarian rift between Sunnis and Shias.

Suzanne Del Rizzo’s picture book “My Beautiful Birds” is based on an article she read about a Syrian boy living in Jordan in the Zaatari refugee camp who had tamed wild birds. In her book, she writes from the perspective of Sami, a boy who trains pigeons and must leave his birds behind when his family evacuates from their home in Syria and walks to a refugee camp in Jordan. There, Sami finds solace in caring for wild birds.

To research her young adult novel “A Land of Permanent Goodbyes,” the novelist Atia Abawi traveled to Lesbos, Greece, and spoke to Syrians in a refugee camp. Those conversations helped shape her book, which centers on a Syrian family that escapes an ISIS stronghold for Istanbul and then Greece.