Although Peck uses Russell Culver, a boy of 15, to narrate the events in the book, Culver’s older sister Tansy, his aunt Maude and his father take turns revealing the larger truths and complications of life. Setting the story in rural America, Peck introduces Russell, a farm boy captivated by a romantic vision of industrial America and the awesome power of the new steam-powered harvesting equipment. “All I wanted,” Russell tells the reader, “was to be on a threshing crew…that was my dream and school stood between me and it.” Sister Tansy, serving as temporary teacher after the sudden death of the ancient school mistress Miss Myrt Arbuckle, conducts the school year with a disciplined hand and eventually confesses her own goal to obtain a teaching certificate and her desire to keep Russell and his younger brother Lloyd in school. Even Charlie Parr, Russell's older friend, reveals through his actions, hope for Tansy's eventual affections.
Hominy Ridge School is where most of the action takes place, reminding readers of this all-important role of education as a theme. Peck shows this in the chapter, “Two Miracles and a Mercy,” in which Tansy nervously anticipates a visit by the School Board to evaluate her qualifications to teach. Each student displays a special gift nurtured at the rural school -- Glenn Tarbox’s nature study of a wasps' nest, Little Britches’ early mastery of spelling using the single dictionary and the skilled drawing of Floyd “Flopears” Lumley. Not only are the School Board members duly impressed with the students’ accomplishments, Russell’s descriptions of Flopears’ sketches recall and review the richness of the school year under Tansy’s tutelage. Peck signals to readers also of the priceless value of each student at Hominy Ridge School through Russell's amazed discovery of Flopears' hidden talent. The main character shares this thought: “We’d gotten him wrong. He wasn’t a dunce. He was an artist. According to these pages, he saw us all a good deal clearer than we’d ever seen him.”
With Tansy securely qualified as a teacher, and Russell safely on track with school, Peck reminds readers of the most important theme underpinning all the book’s events -- loyalty to family and to the community. When the Culver family’s own aunt Maude dies at the book’s close, Peck reveals her as the secret poet, “The Sweet Singer of Sycamore Township” whose occasional poems printed in the local paper speak to the themes so important to the author. The final verse of Aunt Maud’s poem says this: “I was plain and country; That’s where it starts and ends, But nobody loved her family more, Nor treasured more her friends.”
Reviewers of children’s literature Carol Otis Hurst and Rebecca Hurst, write, “In many of his books he (Peck) develops a theme in which an individual steps away from the group to achieve independence.” This uniting theme links the other three of dreaming, schooling and loyalty in this humorous, yet sentimentally touching book. On the website "Carol Hurst's Children Literature Site," Hurst and Otis add, “He advises young people who want to become writers to get to know people who don't conform to the group. This is a common theme in many of his novels.” In “The Teacher’s Funeral” Richard Peck presents quirky characters who become beloved to the reader for their odd peculiarities and heartfelt country wisdom.