A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
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40 free A Tree Grows in Brooklyn trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has been handed from reader to reader since 1943. It follows Francie Nolan, a bookish girl growing up poor in a crowded corner of Brooklyn in the early 1900s, with a mother who never stops working and a father who is as lovable as he is unreliable. Very little happens that would make a newspaper, yet readers remember its small scenes for the rest of their lives. This quiz walks through the whole story: the Nolan household and its thrifty habits, the aunts and neighbours, Francie's schools and first jobs, the losses and the hopeful ending. It also steps outside the novel to the author's own life, the book's surprising wartime readership, the classic Hollywood adaptation, the Broadway musical and the places the title has turned up since. The questions suit book clubs, students revising the novel and anyone who read it years ago and wants to see what stuck. They start gently and get harder, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which tenement neighborhood, also the author's birthplace, do the Nolans live in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Williamsburg
Williamsburg is where Betty Smith was born in 1896, and the top-floor tenement on Grand Street where her family settled became the model for the Nolans' home.
Q 02Which hardy species native to China grows in the Nolans' yard and inspires the title of Betty Smith's Brooklyn novel?
Tree of heaven
Tree of heaven keeps re-sprouting however often it is cut down, which is why Smith made it the symbol of Francie's will to rise out of poverty.
Q 03What irregular job does Francie's charming, hard-drinking father Johnny Nolan hold in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Singing waiter
Singing waiter echoes real life: Betty Smith's own father waited tables, drank heavily and provided for his family only now and then.
Q 04Besides the Bible, whose works does Katie Nolan read to her children a page a night in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was the choice of Katie's immigrant mother, who could not read English herself but believed his plays were among the greatest works ever written.
Q 05How do Francie and Neeley win their Christmas tree in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Standing firm as it is thrown
Standing firm as it is thrown at them wins the biggest tree of all: by local custom, trees left unsold at midnight on Christmas Eve are hurled at children, and whoever stays upright keeps one.
Q 06Bugs Bunny's cartoon spoof of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is titled A Hare Grows in which place?
Manhattan
Manhattan gets the title, but the punchline belongs to the novel: Bugs brandishes a copy at a gang of dogs, who turn and race off across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Q 07Which stage director, later famous for On the Waterfront, made his first feature film with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was not the only future director on set: Nicholas Ray earned his first Hollywood credit on the picture, as its dialogue coach.
Q 08Which drink does Katie Nolan let her children waste, while every scrap of bread is used, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Coffee
Coffee is brewed once, early in the day, in the Nolan flat, then reheated for hours and stretched with chicory, and everyone is allowed three cups a day with milk.
Q 09Where does young Francie Nolan sit to read, as little Florry does at the end of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
On the fire escape
On the fire escape, the young Francie read and watched the neighbourhood's young women dress for their dates; seeing Florry do the same, she says goodbye to her younger self.
Q 10Which illness, worsened by years of drinking, kills Johnny Nolan on Christmas Day in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is the only cause entered on the death record, because Katie will not have his alcoholism admitted in public; Johnny is 34 when he dies.
Q 11Which instrument does Neeley Nolan grow up to play as a ragtime musician in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Piano
Piano reached the Nolan flat by luck: the previous tenant could not afford the movers' fee and left hers behind, and Katie traded an hour of housework for each lesson.
Q 12Which university, where Betty Smith once took classes, is Francie Nolan bound for as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ends?
Michigan
Michigan let Betty Smith sit in its classes as a special student although she had never finished high school, and Francie likewise gets in without a diploma.
Q 13From which European country did Katie Nolan's parents, the Rommelys, emigrate in the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Austria
Q 21In which Southern college town was Brooklyn-born Betty Smith living when she wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill became her home after a New Deal theatre project posted her to North Carolina in 1936, so the best-known novel of Brooklyn's tenements was written in the South.
Q 22Under which working title did Betty Smith first send her story of Francie Nolan to publishers, who kept rejecting it?
They Lived in Brooklyn
They Lived in Brooklyn was turned down by several publishers before Harper & Brothers took an interest in 1942; revised with its editors and retitled, it needed a second printing before its official publication date.
Q 23Which national body named A Tree Grows in Brooklyn one of its Books That Shaped America in 2012?
Austria was the homeland of Thomas and Mary Rommely; Thomas hated America so much that he forbade English at home, while Johnny Nolan's parents came from Ireland.
Q 14What single name does Aunt Sissy call each of her husbands and lovers in the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
John
John was her name for every one of them until her last husband insisted on being called Steve, his own name. The 1951 Broadway musical changed the pet name to Harry.
Q 15Which retired policeman turned wealthy politician does Katie Nolan agree to marry late in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Michael McShane
Michael McShane has admired Katie for years, and he asks to adopt her baby and give the child his name so that she will grow up knowing a father.
Q 16What does the factory make where Francie Nolan takes her first job after grade school in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Artificial flowers
Artificial flowers were her trade as a stemmer, fixing stalks to fake roses; Betty Smith, sent out to work at 14, spent time in a factory making tissue paper.
Q 17What does Johnny Nolan falsify so that Francie can transfer to a better school in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
The family's address
The family's address was the lie that got her in, and it mirrors life: Betty Smith wrangled her own way into an out-of-district school in Greenpoint.
Q 18Which actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Johnny Nolan in the 1945 film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
James Dunn
James Dunn had not made a major studio film for five years, his career dented by his own drinking, when the part of the alcoholic father brought him back.
Q 19Which child star earned a special juvenile Oscar as Francie Nolan in the 1945 film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Peggy Ann Garner
Peggy Ann Garner won the part because the director insisted on a real child, although the studio had wanted an older actress for so demanding a role.
Q 20In which World War II miniseries is a soldier seen reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn on guard duty in Germany?
Band of Brothers
Band of Brothers shows Frank Perconte with the book in its ninth episode, Why We Fight, a true-to-life touch, since the novel was a favourite among American troops.
Library of Congress
Library of Congress curators grouped it with The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath in the exhibition's 1900 to 1950 section, calling it an early socially conscious novel.
Q 24Which pocket-sized wartime paperback series made A Tree Grows in Brooklyn a favourite of American troops overseas?
Armed Services Editions
Armed Services Editions had to print it a second time to meet demand, and Betty Smith said servicemen sent her ten times more fan mail than civilians did.
Q 25How does Katie Nolan earn the wages that keep her family housed in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Cleaning apartment buildings
Cleaning apartment buildings covers the Nolans' rent: Katie is janitress of three tenement houses, scrubbing their floors to support a family of four.
Q 26Which treat does Francie Nolan claim for a poor family, then eat herself, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
A pumpkin pie
A pumpkin pie the size of a saucer prompts her first organised lie; when she owns up, her teacher explains the difference between a lie and a story.
Q 27Which job does Aunt Evy take over from her injured husband Willie, and do better, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Driving a milk wagon
Driving a milk wagon suits Evy because she treats the horses far more kindly than Willie ever did; he later walks out on her to tour as a one-man band.
Q 28What does student Ben Blake give Francie Nolan near the end of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
A promise ring
A promise ring comes with a five-year wait: Ben vows to marry her then if she still wants him, and Francie likes him without being sure she loves him.
Q 29What is soldier Lee Rhynor hiding when he woos Francie Nolan before shipping out in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
His upcoming wedding
His upcoming wedding to another woman goes unmentioned while he swears he loves Francie, and she learns the truth from a letter written by his new wife.
Q 30Which event forces the press clipping office where Francie Nolan works to close in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
US entry into World War I
US entry into World War I ruins the bureau's trade, so Francie retrains as a teletype operator and plans to skip high school for college classes.