Life is Beautiful: inner journeys

Some suggested related material suggestions:
These deal with similar historical material. Art Spiegleman’s graphic novel, Maus, deals with similar material to your text but is a very different form.
Shaun Tan’s The Arrival treats the changes of migration as a consequence of some difficulties in the home country but this text is more allegorical. Tan is an Australian children’s book author although this is not specifically for children.
Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer deals with the life story of a Chinese dancer’s decision to pursue his career and thus leave China. He now lives in Melbourne and the book has been reworked as a children’s book, The Peasant Prince.
Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa is also worth thinking about. It’s an autobiography. Don’t do the film.
Che Guevara’s journal, Motorcycle Diaries charts a journey that changed his life and created the political revolutionary. It’s the background to the movie of the same name.
Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman, From Baghdad With Love deals with the horrors of the Iraqi war through the eyes of an American soldier who finds a dog that becomes very important to his and other troops mental and emotional survival. Don’t dismiss it too lightly. It actually deals with that human need for affection to survive and the lengths people will go to to achieve it that is in your text. It’s also true.