SarahJanet's Books

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge.

This is a book of poetry, which is something I would generally avoid if it weren’t on the YRCA list. I’ve never been much of a fan of poetry, but this one surprised me. It’s the story of a kid with mono who’s therefore off the baseball team, and to pass the time he turns to poetry. The poems are in the form of him figuring out poetry as he writes it, and it’s kind of a neat setup that I enjoyed (again) more than I expected to. (Clearly I should be expanding my horizons on what I expect to like.)

There’s not much to the book – it’s one of the shortest on the YRCA list this year and definitely the shortest intermediate book – but in between the lines of the poetry lessons are some pretty well done elements about the death of his mother, the struggle to find things in common with his father, and the general trials of growing up. It’s an attempt to get boys interested in poetry, and although boys are interested in the cover (it has a baseball on it), they seem kind of disgusted when they discover it’s “just” poetry. Hopefully it’ll snag a couple of them before they figure out what it is.

posted by SarahJanet @ 3:03 PM