Bullyville Themes

In Bullyville, Bart is grieving for his dead father, big time. Grief is a difficult emotion in its own right, but Bart's happens to be mixed with other harder feelings to boot. His sadness is compl...

It's never easy to be the new kid. But in Bullyville, Bart's not just the new kid at Baileywell, he's the Miracle Boy—the son who saved his mother from dying in the World Trade Center on Septembe...

In a book about bullying (and called Bullyville, no less), it isn't super surprising that weakness is a theme. What's interesting is Bart's attitude toward what he perceives as weakness. He relates...

Bart isn't just dealing with his feelings about his father's death. He's also dealing with the realization that anyone in his life—including his mom and even Bart himself—could die at any given...

Before he even enters the exclusive world of Baileywell, Bart is hyper-aware of class in Bullyville. His family's never had much money, a fact that eats at his mother, who has long dreamed of being...

In Bullyville, family is the source of real happiness and intense despair. After his father's death, Bart looks to his mom for love and comfort. They're super close, but they don't talk much about...

In Bullyville, Bart deals with profound change in every area of his life, much of which can be traced back to the terrorist attacks on September 11. On a personal level, he lost his dad that day, a...

As a thirteen-year-old getting bullied at an all boys' school, it's fair to say that Bart thinks about masculinity a lot in Bullyville. And that's just at school. At home, having recently lost his...