Customer Reviews

I Had Seen Castles

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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Although the picture on the cover is of a soldier, this is far from a "traditional" war novel. While World War II is the turning point of the main character, John's, life, comparitively little of the book deals with John's life as a soldier. Instead, the book focuses on the period between Pearl Harbor (when John is 17), and when John turns 18 and can enlist. The author paints an excellent picure of John as a young man doing normal, ordinary things. He meets a girl (who is against the war), falls in love with her and makes plans of the future, when he is discharged. THe war, however, changes John forever; he is not changed because of a physical wound or anything similar, but in ways I think it's best to let Cynthia Rylant explain.

Have I given away too much of the story? I don't think so. Like "Romeo and Juliet," the joy in this book is not the suspense that comes with the unfolding of the plot, but rather the prose and feelings evoked by the author. Highly recomended!

One word came to me when I finished this short novel: profound. It switched from the present tense: a 67 year old man in Toronto, writing his memoirs, to the memoirs themselves: the man as a 17 year old boy preparing to fight in WWII. It was written in sparse prose, but the brief words easily conveyed the feelings of the boy as he faced the reality of war. It was a quick read but one that I know will stay with me for a long time. I would strongly suggest this novel to anyone interested in WWII, or anyone in the mood for a profound read.

When John is seventeen and living in Pittsburgh, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. He, like almost everyone else living in the United States at that time, is caught up in the hype of the war. Many of his classmates are joining the military as soon as possible, and John is anxious to get in line with them so he doesn't have to think of himself as a coward. His older sister is busy entertaining young men who are desperate for female company before they go away, possibly never to return again. John's father is a scientist and has gone off to California to work on new military technology, and John's mother is working in a factory making weapons.

Shortly before he plans on joining the army, John meets Ginny. She is a beautiful Irish girl who has moved with her family to Pittsburgh to take advantage of the abundance of jobs in the city. Ginny is the most amazing girl John has ever met, and the two of them are almost immediately inseparable. The big problem is that Ginny is completely against war and she hates the idea of John enlisting. He can't make her understand why joining is so important to him, and she can't make him understand why he is so against this war.

I liked the personal story of how one person dealt with World War II. I also liked that things didn't work out perfectly for John after the war; his romanticized idea of how things would be was completely incorrect.

I would have liked to have found out more what John's life was like after the war. There was a lot of time that was skipped in the book; most of the focus was on the time just before John went to war.

I just finished reading this book and I loved it! It told historical facts and what was going through soldier's minds, yet it was also a light love story. It is easy to read and not too complicated, I think everyone should read this book!

How you feel about WAR isn't something you discuss often with your peers, is it? Not if you are an 8th or 9th grader? Not even if you are a high school junior, or an adult. Perhaps this review should be posted on Memorial Day 2006 to mark the last sixty years that should have been lived in Peace. "I Had Seen Castles" tells of John Dante, a boy who grew up building castles of blocks and peopled with knights . . . who became a youth fighting in the lands of castles . . . then later, he suffered alone , an aging ex-patriot who "could not stay in America because America had not suffered."

In this country you can hardly have lived your entire life in "peacetime." At some time you became aware that when people write or say *war* they are referring to WW II which involved our country from 1939, even though Congress did not declare war until after the Pearl Harbor bombing December 7, 1942. Through the years you add to a list of place names that choke you: Pearl Harbor, Dresden, Nagasaki, Rwanda, Darfur, Abu Ghraib. Like the 'acid reflux' widely talked about in commercials, these names continue to eat into the national psyche.

This haunting story is a radical departure from Cynthia Rylant's other titles, written primarily for children. It is a short story with untethered adolescence paired with the horrific realities of war. The author writes beautifully about the sustenance born out of Love. This is a small book to hold, handsomely designed. It will hold the uninterrupted attention of readers. It is also a book to read each year on a day set aside for remembering. Although it is a book for all generations, it seems especially appropriate for today's youth.

The poet Rilke described his emotional response to war with these words: "Only pain, and what can't be said." These words seem to come from the mind and pain of survivor Dante, who was no longer eighteen but burdened forever with memories from sixty years ago. (review by mcHAIKU)

This thin volume packs an outsized emotional punch. Written in a memoir form, this is a first person acount of what it was like to come of age during World War II. While the narrator becomes a soldier, this isn't a book about the physical trials of war, but instead is a reflection on the psychic impact of going to war. We watch how the war impacts almost every aspect of his life, changing him irrevocably from an innocent boy to a cynical man who has seen too much pointless death and destruction. An emotionally charged view of the costs of war on the survivors, it should be required reading for anyone in a position to put these young soldiers in harms way.

I discovered this book last summer and was instantly thrown under its spell. Rylant has, to my knowledge, never written such a truly literary YA novel before, or since. Some of the most lush, touching, haunting and beautiful wordings and phrases appear here, from the very title alone to the final punch ending.

A true masterpiece...depicitng maleness in all its contradictory slendor, with compassion and tenderness. Simply unforgettable.

If you want a book that shows kids great writing, this is it. A quick read but one which every one of my students loves. In a few short pages, Rylant demonstrates the power of her pen.

This is not meant to be a book of suspense. From the very beginning we know that the narrator is telling us the story of his experiences during World War II from many years since that time. We need not even have any suspense about the fate of his relationship with the girl he left behind, as it's reasonably clear that he's alone when he tells us the story.

Rather, this is a story of what happened to one boy when the U.S. entered WWII. Told with incredible detail, Rylant puts us inside the head of a seventeen-year-old boy who can think of nothing else but joining the army and doing his patriotic duty. Until he meets Ginny, who challenges all of his beliefs about war and patriotism. Looking back on it, he is able to recognize her extreme courage in speaking out against war and encouraging him to register as a conscientious objector, but at the time, all he could see was all the other boys going off to war, even though he knew that all too many of them were not coming home.

He joins up as soon as he is able and is shipped off to the European front. His patriotic ideals last for a while, but soon he admits that he is killing the enemy only to stay alive himself. Ginny's letters ring too true to bear, and eventually he stops writing back to her. When he returns from the war, she and her family have moved away, and he is never able to find her again.

This is also not a book of regret, although clearly the narrator regrets in some way the loss of Ginny, and the loss of his own innocence when he went away to war. But this is a book of truth. Rylant doesn't sugarcoat the nature of war or the effect it has on those who must fight it, both on the battlefield and at home.

I have not read many books until recently and this is one that I am glad I had the opportunity to read. The book expresses such a powerful antiwar message at such a time when war war was encouraged. It was very easy for me to slip into John's shoes throughout the book and often times found myself looking to the sky.