Shakespeare Bats Cleanup

A mother's death, getting over mono, and poetry is the combination reader's get reading Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge, which is a book that documents Kevin's, a young adolescent boy,  transitions or "coming of age" through difficult periods of his life and using his poetry to work through them.

First, Kevin is introduced to readers with mono and this is where he, now being a social outcast, picks up a book from his dad's office about poetry. With the newly found poetry book in have, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup's structure changes completely, in that now Kevin will translate his idea's through poetry structured writing. He goes through very important stages of life that is expressed with humor and his poetry.

Relationships are always awkward and discomforting, but Kevin ingeniously uses this "coming of age" transition to make for humorous poetry. For example Kevin writes:
"This is an eighth-grade romance, okay?
Which means X tells Y she likes me. I tell
Y to tell X I like her, too. The we start
sneaking looks at each other" (pg 13)
This explanation is a clear picture of what the rules of dating in the eight-grade are. The constant telling people who you like only to get a simple look or a glance. Kevin creates not only a humorous setting but also creates one with serious reasons behind it.

The most heart-wrenching poetry that Kevin provides for readers is the one about his mom. Kevin chooses to use a type of poem called a pantoum, which has repetition of the line before in the next stanza. Using the pantoum is more powerful for this part of his "coming of age" because grieving over a parent who has passed away is never easy at any age, and for poetry it expresses his lose and love for his mother. Kevin's word choices impacts the reader more than any other poem he creates,
"She always used to sing
standing over the sink.
She'd splash water and suds.
after taking off her rings.

Standing over the sink
was her time to be alone.
after taking off her rings.
Dad and I upstairs or outside" (pg 29).
It is present how much her individual touches was present in Kevin's mind. This poem is one that was difficult to write for his grieving as well as to keep the structural form of the poem. It is just another "coming of age" process that Kevin uses in his poetry.

Kevin's use of poetry creates a book that portrays a story of a boy in the middle of a "coming of age" process. He uses poetry for the awkward times of eighth-grade and intertwines humor to give the poem more meaning. Kevin not only uses humor but grief to show how much his complex poetry can help heal his complex feelings for the death of his mother. His poetry has been there through out the whole book to help him along in his transitional times to "come of age" and it has made him a different person than he ever thought he would be.