Bert Breen's Barn Analysis

Bert Breen's Barn is a regional novel. That means it has a very strong sense of place and that the place ties into the novel's events, as well as into how characters think and act. Tom's story take...

The majority of the novel is from Tom's perspective and in Tom's "present." That is, we experience events when Tom does and we get the same information as Tom at the same time as he does. The narra...

Historical FictionJust by looking at the cover or reading the first line of Bert Breen's Barn, it's pretty easy to get the vibe that we're not in the twenty-first century. Bert Breen's Barn is the...

Even though there are plenty of dry descriptions and blunt observations, they're often written in a tone that gives surprisingly poignant moments of observation about humanity. For example, when To...

Okay, so this novel won't exactly take you on an action-packed thrill ride, nor will it have your sides splitting with witty banter. Many of the passages, in fact, contain detailed descriptions of...

Besides being fantastically alliterative and tough to say ten times fast, the title, Bert Breen's Barn, is pretty straightforward. This guy named Bert Breen once built a really sturdy barn. Our mai...

The novel ends with Tom looking at the barn on his property. He remembers the first time he went to the barn with Birdy and how the Widow Breen had pointed her shotgun at him for nosing around:The...

The plot of Bert Breen's Barn is very straightforward: boy meets barn, boy wants barn, boy works hard to get that barn. Oddly enough, the simplicity is actually one of the things that might make th...

There Once Was a Poor Boy Named TomBefore Tom was ever born, there was Bert Breen, who builds a nice barn up on a hill and is more than happy to live out his life away from most people. The word "h...

Walter Edmonds bought a truck so that his mail carrier wouldn't have to deliver the cartons and cartons of books his editor mailed him for signing. That's a problem you don't get every day. (Source...

Bert Breen's Barn is good, wholesome family fare. Seriously. Read it to your baby brother, to your grandma, to your best friend. No one will find anything to squirm about. Tom's world is entirely o...

Noah and the Ark (42.3)Charles Blondin tightrope walking over Niagara Falls (44.13)