“Shakespeare Bats Cleanup” by Ron Koertge

When fourteen year old Kevin Boland is diagnosed with mono, he is forced to drop baseball, which has been at the center of his ambitions until this time. His father, a writer, provides Kevin with a notebook in case he becomes bored and decides to write. Unexpectedly, Kevin becomes incredibly intrigued by writing and begins to experiment with poetry. He stealthily borrows his father’s poetry book in order to examine various forms of poetry, and thus creates a novel in verse within his writing. Kevin portrays the average thoughts of a fourteen year old boy, and talks frequently of his friends and the girls he is interested in. While sick, Kevin becomes closer to his father than he has been able to be since his mother’s death. While he and his father were moderately close, he occasionally reflects on the way his mother would have acted had she been alive while he had mono. However, he and his father begin going to poetry readings and his father discreetly suggests that Kevin could read a poem at a show if he were interested.

I feel as though this was actually one of the most compelling and realistic stories I read this semester. Kevin’s story is incredibly ordinary, and thus very relatable. I would use this book as a whole class read for several reasons. I think there are many literary elements that can be plucked from this book, such as similes, metaphors, voice, and characterization, as well as the many poetic elements that are present throughout the story. I wrote a reading strategies project for this book for Content Literacy, and I think that I would actually work to further build my lesson for that project in order to focus upon novels in verse in addition to poetry. I think that there are infinite resources within this book, and I would not at all hesitate to incorporate it into my classroom.