After a decades-long wave of blockbuster novels about wizards, vampires and dystopias, the latest trend in children’s literature is surprisingly old. Historical fiction about World War II is having a renaissance.

“We’re seeing more publishing on it than we ever have before,” said David Levithan, the vice president and publisher of Scholastic, noting that this is a topic “that across the board is popular with kids of all ages.”

“It’s a story with unambiguous good guys and bad guys,” he said.

This year, Scholastic is publishing seven middle-grade and young-adult novels set in the period, including Alan Gratz’s “Projekt 1065,” about a boy who joined the Hitler Youth as a spy, and “The Darkest Hour,” Caroline Tung Richmond’s novel about a teenage spy in France.

World War II has always captivated readers, and authors and publishers say the subject has the rare potential to draw men and women as well as young and old readers to a single title.

“World War II really opens up the market,” said the novelist Kristin Hannah, whose 2015 novel, “The Nightingale,” about women in the French Resistance, has sold more than two million copies.

World War II stories may hold a special appeal because this was a conflict that young people got swept up in — as refugees, Resistance fighters and youth soldiers — as dire circumstances forced them to behave like adults.

Here are three novelists who are bringing World War II to life for a new generation of young readers.