Soldier's Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers

This is a book I read in middle school and I bought it to reread and I forgot how good it was. The detail, characters and plot is amazing.

I read this book as a ‘read-along’ experience with one of my grandsons; something we could talk about and exchange thoughts and opinions. I found it to be compelling and hard-hitting as Paulsen describes the depravities and sufferings of Civil War soldiers. He cleverly wove the story of a 15-year-old Minnesota volunteer into the historically accurate tapestry of the Civil War. It was a journey many young men make from the parades, bands and marches through the battlefields and back home again, for the lucky ones, with missing limbs and shattered souls. The young always pay the highest price in war. Paulsen delivers that message artfully.John E Nevola - Author of The Last Jump and The Final FlagU.S. Army VeteranMilitary Writer's Society of America

Gary Paulsen used real life facts to "fill in the details" of Charley Goddard and his experience of war from the glamour of signing up and marching in parades, to the hum drum life of training and waiting for the excitement to begin, to the REALITY of war. It is ugly, frightening, bloody, violent and no one comes home the same after the experience.In a time when war is so far away and when we are desensitized by violence on the TV and in movies, this was touching, distressing and eye opening, as a parent and as an adult who has never gone to war...

My 7 year old grandson and I read the book together. He wants to be a Marine when he grows up and this gave him a good opportunity to see how it used to be to go to war.

I bought this book to use with middle school students during a Civil War study. By the conclusion, though, I found myself in tears.For middle school students it was attention getting and graphic with details describing the horrors the main character, Charley, experiences during the war. Yet, the ending brings them full circle to more sensitive, empathetic emotions and a world needing to understand the personal devastation of those horrors.

Soldier's Heart, by the award-winning author Gary Paulsen, focuses on Charlie Goddard’s enlistment in The First Minnesota Volunteers. The young boy enlists in hopes of becoming a man and supporting his family, unlike his nonexistent father. All through the novel, Paulson expresses the competition of the battlefield along with the symbol of hope. Along the way, Charlie quickly learns that to support his family, he has to survive the circumstances. Paulson’s descriptive writing truly shows the deaths portrayed and how surviving on nothing but stale bread could bring the soldiers together.Paulson has researched for the novel very well and gives a great understanding of how life was. This book is very educational although very repetitive. In each chapter, there is a new battle. In just a few Paulson proclaims which food they had eaten and how wounds would heal. Most actions explained in the novel were relevant but a few not. Paulson directs attention to Charlie’s very first battle, The Battle of Bull Run. Also to his last, the Battle at Gettysburg.Implying that every soldier should have a soldiers heart also known as Hyperventilation syndrome or a form of PTSD. By the end of the story, Charlie has a Soldier's Heart, which may not seem honorable but it reminds him of the past he lived. Only dying at the young age of twenty - three, Paulson explains the true fate of Charlie Goddard during the nightmare called the Civil War.Paulson makes an almost clear image of how the entire war affected Charlie with an injury lasting a lifetime after being shot in the leg. As Charlie or Paulsen described it the killing was more like butchery, slaughtering every soldier one by one. Since Charlie was so young, he never learned to shave or anything about women from war. These cons go to show the realities of the ages enlisted. The recommended age is young adult or middle to highschool, in fact this novel is a true story about Charlie. The book gets a 3.5/5 because it could be monotonous at times and not engaging, although educational. Paulson has an interesting point of view on Charlie, as he adventures to which could be his victory or his deadend.

Chose this to do a book report on for a college history class, and was pleasantly surprised! While many parts of the book aren't pleasant to think about, I found myself not being able to put it down...I read it all in one sitting! It's a fairly easy read but intensely good.Maybe I liked this so much because I come from a family of Veterans (incl. my husband), but I'd definitely recommend this book!

Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen is an easy-read. It is written in language in which everyone - I think - would or could understand. The story itself is very straightforward. It focuses on Charley Goddard's (the main character) struggles and experiences to be a man. In a very young age, he joins the First Minnesota Volunteers during the American Civil War. And from there, his journey to the real word begins.