⋙ [PDF] Free I Had Seen Castles Cynthia Rylant 9780152053123 Books

I Had Seen Castles Cynthia Rylant 9780152053123 Books

Download As PDF : I Had Seen Castles Cynthia Rylant 9780152053123 Books

I Had Seen Castles Cynthia Rylant 9780152053123 Books

I originally read this book when I was in jr high. Many many years later I managed to find a copy and have reread it several times since purchasing it. I normally don’t care to reread books but this one is very special to me. Love everything about the story.


Tags : I Had Seen Castles [Cynthia Rylant] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div>John Dante is seventeen when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, and he wants to fight for his country. But then he falls head over heels for Ginny Burton,Cynthia Rylant,I Had Seen Castles,Young Readers Paperback,0152053123,Historical - Military & Wars,Historical - United States - 20th Century,Romance - General,World War, 1939-1945,World War, 1939-1945;Fiction.,World War, 1939-1945;Juvenile fiction.,Boys & Men,Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9),Fiction,Fiction-Historical,Historical - United States - General,JUVENILE,Juvenile Fiction,Juvenile Fiction Boys & Men,Juvenile Fiction General,Juvenile Fiction Historical Military & Wars,Juvenile Fiction Historical United States 20th Century,Juvenile Fiction Historical United States General,Juvenile Grades 7-9 Ages 12-14,RYLANT, CYNTHIA,United States,YOUNG ADULT FICTION,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Boys & Men,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Historical Military & Wars,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Historical United States 20th Century,YOUNG ADULT FICTION Romance General,Young Adult FictionBoys & Men

I Had Seen Castles Cynthia Rylant 9780152053123 Books Reviews

One of the first things that my sixth grade teacher told the class when she assigned it, was that this novel was interesting because of the fact it was a woman author writing about a man's experiences at war. Immediately every boy in the class groaned and said it was going to be too girly and probably end with "and then they all lived happily ever after."

Well this is in no way a happily ever after kind of story. John thinks that to fight for your country means honor and bravery. What could be better that spreading democracy to the world? And then John meets Ginny and falls head over heels in love with this woman who tells him she hates the war. Now confused and doubting, he enlists not to fight for his country but because not enlisting would make him a coward. When John went to war, it wasn't a fantasy war made up by a woman, it was a real war. And when John returned from war he became a new man, he felt distant from everyone who didn't go to war because he learned overseas that he had more in common with his enemy than he did with the citizen of his own country. . The only person that John feels he can ever relate to again is Ginny.

But this is not the story about how John came back from war and got the girl of his dreams. In real life, stories like that are rare and that is not the story Rylant chose to tell. It's a gritty and disparaging tale about what happens when you strip everything away from a boy and send him into a world where the fight becomes less about democracy and more about the man next to you. And furthermore what happens when the war is over and this young man can't even bear to face his fellow soldiers that meant so much to him now that they are back in safe territory. It's a sad tale but beautifully written and it captures the sentiment of PTSD very well. World War II is my favorite era in history and this book had a lot to do with that.
This is a novella about a 17 year old boy living in Pittsburgh during WW2 . At the beginning of the story, he tells of the normal life a teen of that time lives ,things ,he enjoys, and just a life in general .
Then Pearl Harbor happens . This event changes his life, along with everyone else's . His home life was turned upside down. Each person in his family was deeply affected in their own ways,and it changed all their lives forever .
It portrays a normal family that transforms into a completely different family .
The main thing I think the author is trying to show, is how War can take an ordinary teen boy with hopes and dreams for his future ,into a Soldier ,a man , and an entirely different person . How the things seen ,heard and felt during war-time ,can completely change the person you are ,into someone you could never imagine being .
The description of the book also says it's a love story and I guess in a way it is, but it is a truly sad love story .
I can't give anything more than that away .The book is very short but also very powerful . Its' description also states that it has been used as a classroom read for young adults .I think it might in SOME way ,explain to kids today what it was like being in that young boy's shoes . I'm not sure any book could truly put a person INTO a war and explain it thoroughly enough so that you would understand exactly what it was like. You can only imagine ,through this boy's eyes ,what it was like .
I'll give this book 4/5 . I usually don't go for short stories such as this,but this one deserves that many stars . The author took very few words to describe a very huge subject. so for that, she gets 4 stars .
Love this book
Excellent book!
Wonderful book.
Books like this convince me that I should consider reading young adult novels more often. Then again, Cynthia Rylant's beautiful, compact book I HAD SEEN CASTLES seems to appeal to a thread of common sympathy all people can find inside themselves.
John Dante, a soon-to-be-enlisted soldier from Pittsburgh, is the novel's narrator. He alternates between his youth in the 1940s and his elderly present self in 1992 Toronto. Though CASTLES's subject is undoubtedly war, most of its drama focuses on how WWII reshaped the quiet lives of everyday people.

"Pittsburgh was darkness," it begins. "The taste of smoke in one's throat and heavy smog and black soot...Industry gave the city shiny black Fords and millionaires and lights" (1).

Rylant so quickly sketches in the setting that its simple vividness startles. The pictures range from the tenderness of a boy at home in summer, in an airy white kitchen, with "a bowl of sweet peaches in heavy cream to eat," to this image of sacrilege much later in the book, during John's service in the Mediterranean

"The pictures in Life may have shown suffering and death to the people back home, but they never showed dismemberment...the chest cavity blown wide open so that the heart can be seen, still beating, and the boy to whom the heart belongs reaches out and asks to be helped to die" (78).

The novel's main plotline centers on the romance between John and Ginny, a lower-class Irish girl who hates the war as much as she loves the boy she is sending off to the Front. Rylant's narrative manages to avoid much of the sentimentality that this situation might spawn, and instead creates a familiar but touching portrait of the faces behind the glossy, patriotic war posters. Her best insight is in describing how war erases the distinctions between individuals and clobbers people with the labels of "patriot," "yellow" conscientious objector, or "enemy"

"As the fighting continued, we became more and more generalized, like figures in stock magazine ads...My mother was no longer the photographer...She was, instead, Rosie the Riveter...My sister was no longer the young woman with ambitions of teaching in a rural one-room schoolhouse and becoming a writer someday...She was, instead, a soldier's girl. My father relished old books and sailing...He loved mystery and the earth and the stars...The war reduced him to an anonymous scientist employed by the government" (61-62).

Make no mistake, this is an antiwar novel - but not in a left-wing sense. It is more empathetic than political; it begs for peace because the blood of friends - or even of "enemies" - is a terrible thing to see on the earth. I wish everyone would read it.
Arrived quickly and in good condition. Good book, I was required to read for school
I originally read this book when I was in jr high. Many many years later I managed to find a copy and have reread it several times since purchasing it. I normally don’t care to reread books but this one is very special to me. Love everything about the story.