Bullyville Analysis

Most of the book takes place in and around Baileywell Preparatory Academy, a boys' boarding school that looks like a "scaled-down, cheesy medieval castle" (1.2). An elite private institution, day s...

Our main man is thirteen-year-old Bart Rangely, and over the course of the book he tells us about the "worst year of [his] life" (1.1) in harrowing detail. Poor Bart is going through a bit of a rou...

Young adult literature often focuses on young protagonists, and our narrator, thirteen-year-old Bart Rangely, fits the bill perfectly. Plus he finds himself struggling through classic young adult p...

Many of the plot points in Bullyville are super sad, contributing to the book's gloomy tone. Bart's dad dies in the terrorist attacks on September 11, and then his friend Nola dies in the hospital....

No matter what your actual pace is, the act of reading Bullyville feels rushed. At the level of the sentence, many lines begin with conjunctions like "and" or "but," which helps build momentum. Als...

As a title, Bullyville is borrowed from one of the many nicknames given to Baileywell Preparatory Academy, the all-boys boarding school where most of the novel takes place. As Bart Rangely (a.k.a....

In the final paragraphs of Bullyville, we fast-forward far into the future. Bart, now an adult with his own family, points out Baileywell to his kids. It still looks like Medieval Times, because so...

With straightforward language and a simple plot, Bullyville should be a breeze for most readers. The emotions it explores are where it gets more difficult—characters don't always behave in ways y...

From Bad to WorseBart's having the worst year of his life. His father dies in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks after having abandoned Bart and his mom six months earlier. Bart has lots of f...

Francine Prose credits the book One Hundred Years of Solitude with convincing her to drop out of Harvard as a graduate student. (Source.) Francine Prose's writing uniform? Her husband's pajamas....

Packed with grief and angst and boy pranks, Bullyville is pretty much the opposite of steamy. The closest the book comes to talking about romance is a sort-of crush that Bart once had in middle sch...

Lancelot (1.4)J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (1.4)F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (4.73) September 11, 2001 (1.18) World War II (4.1)"Portraits of Grief," New York Times (2.40)Windows on t...