In
Daniel Pinkwater's
1982 novel
Young Adult Novel, there are two Kevin Shapiros. The first is the
fictional 13-year-old
orphan made up by the group of high-school students who call themselves the Wild
Dada Ducks. The fictional Kevin suffers all the
misfortunes the Ducks can think of to heap on him. One of the Ducks, Charles the Cat, explains his
appeal as:
Kevin Shapiro, Boy Orphan is different from the novels in the Himmler High School library in that he never solves his problems. Instead, we usually kill him from time to time. Kevin is indestructible. You can kill him as often as you like. He can be brought back to life in the next chapter, which usually gets told the following day during lunch.
Apparently after the book's publication, a number of readers sent Pinkwater their own Kevin Shapiro stories, a few of which are reprinted in the compilation
Young Adults.
The second Kevin Shapiro is a fellow student of the Dada Ducks at Himmler High School, who doesn't like them at all, especially when the Ducks make flyers announcing him to be "the greatest human, humanoid, bioelectronic entity, funky dude, and disco dancer of all time."