ALA Booklist (Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 1993)

John Dante looks back 50 years to when he was 18 in Pittsburgh and rushing off to fight in World War II. He remembers the intensity on the home front, the urgency that made him grab at love, and the fervent glory of being part of a wonderful show. Then came the loss of innocence in battle, where such words as patriotism and freedom fell to slaughter. Then the return home, spent and weary, cynical and shaken (No one knows who I am). John's pacifist girlfriend is wise, beautiful, good, and altogether too perfect, and the narrative device of an old man remembering allows Rylant to spell out the antiwar messages too heavily. It's the plain prose and the physical images that evoke a strong and subtle sense of the times, both at home and on the front: the terror of being thought a coward, the confidence that you will be safe. The battle scenes are particularly strong, the dreams of chivalry and castles blown away by literal experiences of dismemberment and death. Teens might read this pocket-size, hardcover, intense volume with Hahn's Stepping on the Cracks (1992), about a girl who hides a pacifist deserter in Ohio during World War II; Myers' Fallen Angels (1988), about a Harlem teenager who's not sure how he got to be in Vietnam; and Kerr's Linger (1993), about patriotism at home during the Gulf War. The enemy is always interchangeable, John finds. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1993)

Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1993)

Despite the urging of his girlfriend to become a conscientious objector, John Dante joins the service during World War II. The graphic descriptions of battle and casualties are horrifying, and, although John survives, his ability to lead a normal life has been permanently damaged. His reflections, as a retired professor, on war and life, end the story with an affecting air of acceptance and resignation.

Kirkus Reviews

John Dante is so enmeshed in WW II's patriotic fever that he can hardly wait for his 18th birthday, in 1942, to enlist. Meanwhile, his sister, stricken with empathy and concern, is engaged to two soldiers and pregnant by a third; Dad, a nuclear physicist, is called from Pittsburgh to California for secret research; and John falls sweetly, ardently in love with pretty Ginny, who urges him to become a conscientious objector. To John, her fervent pacifism is incomprehensible; but as he endures active combat, without relief, until 1945, stereotypes give way to the reality of the enemy's humanity, and Ginny's ideas become clear. Still, after his long immersion in horror, John never communicates with her again—until a message at the end of this novel, narrated in 1992 when he's a retired professor in Canada: I want you to know that I am really alive. And I still love you.'' Yet John has not beenalive'' as he might have been: a lifelong solitary, he was even driven from his home by the war (I could not stay in America because America had not suffered''). Excising all but the essential explanations (we never learn how Ginny became a CO) to focus on John's spiritual journey and the events that shape it, Rylant depicts—with some irony and much insight and compassion—the tragedy of young men putting aside their true selves (We were the ghosts of boys and we had come to believe in nothing but each other'') to meet war's terrible demands. A brief tale, in wonderfully spare language and imagery, with a poignant love story and an unexpectedly quiet, melancholy conclusion. (Fiction. 12+)"

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

An idealistic 17-year-old's life changes dramatically when he enlists in the service, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. According to <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW's boxed review, "This finely drawn novel projects emotional truths to rival those of Remarque's <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">All Quiet on the Western Front. Not to be missed." Ages 12-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Oct.)