We get a brief introduction to who Charley is, and then he is thrown into a couple battles, and then all of a sudden it was a couple years later. The writing wasn't very good, and there were lots of longwinded and awkward sentences. This novel just had way too many issues for me to enjoy it. While I am a fan of Gary Paulsen, I was not a fan of Soldier's Heart. His fears and insecurities are exposed as he is quickly thrown into the realities of war. Going a little deeper, we see a 15 year old who thinks he knows it all and has all of the confidence in the world and quickly realizes life is not as easy as it seems. On the surface, most people see this as a book about a 15 year old boy sneaking into the Army and going through all of the experiences of war. It was the most focused I saw my students all semester. Once we got into the book, the students wanted to keep going. This book is very graphic and this was addressed with my seventh graders before we began to read. And the bigger surprise for me was how captivated my seventh graders were when I taught this book two years ago. Paulsen does a great job of vividly describing how a confident 15 year old enlists in the Army, only to find out how insecure he really is. As I am re-reading this for the second time, I am find the pages are flying by.

I remember hearing about it from coworkers who said it was good and gave me a brief description of the book. I heard Gary Paulsen was a good young adult author but up until this point, I had never read any of his work. When I first read this over two years ago, prior to teaching it to 7th graders, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

A Soldier's Heart by Leslie Lynn