Loser (novel)

Loser

Author	Jerry Spinelli
Language	English
Genre	Young adult novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	2002
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	218 pp (first edition hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-000193-3

Loser is a coming-of-age novel by Jerry Spinelli. It centers around Donald Zinkoff, a boy who people mock because he is different.

Plot

The story begins with Laura Lynne Peters and her super mega lame life. is first allowed to go outside of the house to play. He runs around and jumps and screams "Yahoo!".. Then, he meets other children and they go to the alleys, where they compete in all sorts of races. He always loses these races, but nobody, not even Jaime, notices.

Zinkoff then goes to school; his first day of first grade has begun. He wears a large giraffe hat to school, much to the chagrin of his mother. Zinkoff goes to his class and sits down. His teacher, Miss Meeks, tells him he has to take his giraffe hat off. Zinkoff complies surprisingly cheerfully. After the hat has been removed, Miss Meeks goes on to tell her speech for the first day of school, where she calls the students "young citizens" and tells them that they will be in school for a long, long time, something that Zinkoff finds amazing.

Zinkoff goes out to recess, toting his giraffe hat. The other children take his hat and play with it, all of them laughing, including Zinkoff himself. Then, a large fourth grader takes the hat and tells Zinkoff that it's his hat now. Zinkoff does not understand what the kid means by that (thinking that it really is the kid's hat), but he cheerfully agrees with the kid. The fourth grader is greatly annoyed that Zinkoff didn't start to cry, so he throws the hat down and steps on it. Zinkoff doesn't understand, but he takes the hat back anyway.

As first grade progresses, Zinkoff turns out to have atrocious handwriting and is generally not very good at anything. He doesn't seem to notice. He plays soccer and is absolutely abysmal, but doesn't care. When by a stroke of luck he wins the championship game, he offers to give his trophy to his neighbor, Andrew Orwell, who was on the losing team. Orwell wants the trophy but his mother doesn't let him have it. Later, however, Zinkoff leaves his trophy out on his porch and it disappears the next day.

In second grade, Zinkoff's teacher is named Mrs. Biswell. Unlike Miss Meeks, she is mean, dislikes children, and can't stand Zinkoff. She can't comprehend how such a below average student can actually like school, showing up obscenely early every day. After Zinkoff accidentally destroys her prized eraser by vomiting on it (Zinkoff has an upside-down valve in his stomach that causes him to throw up often), she orders him to leave and never come back, although this is later deemed a "misunderstanding" by Mrs. Biswell, who claims she just wanted him to go to the principal's office.

In third grade, Zinkoff misses school for three weeks due to having an operation to fix the valve in his stomach. During this time he is dreadfully bored, as Zinkoff can never wait for a long time at all. He is not allowed to go outside, and when he tries to sneak out, his baby sister Polly always alerts his parents. He decides to bring school to him by testing himself. He goes into the cellar, turns off the lights, and closes the door, planning to confront his bogeyman, the "Furnace Monster". However, just before he passes, he becomes afraid and runs out, failing even his own test.

Zinkoff moves on to fourth grade, still blissfully ignorant of his inability to do anything right. His peers have also failed to notice his shortcomings in the past three years, but that changes, partially due to the unwitting intervention of Zinkoff's well-meaning teacher, Mr. Yalowitz. Mr. Yalowitz sympathizes with Zinkoff, putting him in the front of the class (usually, being a Z, Zinkoff would have to sit in the back, as his teaches organized seating charts alphabetically) and frequently making witty remarks about Zinkoff. However, this only spotlights Zinkoff, so that his classmates begin to see him for what he is- a loser. This reaches a peak on Field Day, where Zinkoff completely loses a huge athletic event.

After Field Day, Zinkoff often hears the word "loser" being said behind his back, but he doesn't think it applies to him so he never turns around. When he does turn, however, he notices it seems that nobody has spoken.

In fifth grade, Zinkoff takes a test that asks him questions about himself. One question asks him who his best friend is. Zinkoff realizes he doesn't have a best friend, so, in a panic, he puts down the name of the first person he sees, Hector Binns. Later he asks Binns if they can be best friends. Binns, a passive, disconnected child who collects earwax to make candles, merely shrugs and says "I guess". However, the friendship doesn't last long, as Hector begins to stop saying "I guess" and starts saying "I guess not".

Field Day comes around again, and Zinkoff is put on the same team as Gary Hobin, the star athlete of the school who Zinkoff so amazingly disappointed last year.Gary Hobin tells Zinkoff to try to go to another team, and Zinkoff tries, but he finds no other team wants him. Unsure of what to do, he doesn't go to school on Field Day. Instead, he goes to the nine hundred block of Willow Street, a place he goes to a lot as it is inhabited by all sorts of strange people, from a man who sits at his window all day waiting for his MIA brother to a toddler kept on a leash. As he's walking, an old woman who often says hello to him invites Zinkoff inside for a sandwich. While he stays there, Zinkoff tells the old woman everything about his life.

Zinkoff graduates and moves on to middle school, where he ceases being a loser and begins to be a nobody. He is still completely ignorant of this, not noticing that he is never picked for teams or that even old friends like Andrew Orwell (now named Drew) seem to ignore him.

That winter there is a snow day and Zinkoff goes out to have fun. However, he stops his snowball fights when he hears that Claudia, the little girl from the nine hundred block of Willow who was kept on a leash, has gone missing. Zinkoff decides that he will find her, so he goes off on his own to do so. He searches through the alleys, knowing that that's where Claudia would be. He searches for seven hours before he passes out.

He wakes up back at home to find that a man driving a snowplow had found him. It turns out that Claudia had been found shortly after Zinkoff went searching for her and that he and been looking fruitlessly all that time. In fact, the police lights he had seen while he searched had been looking for him.

Later, at school, Gary Hobin tells two of his friends, Tuttle and Bonce, about how much of a loser Zinkoff is. Afterwards, they decide to get a game going, and everyone is picked except Zinkoff. Despite being a leftover, Zinkoff refuses to leave, merely standing in the same spot. After a few moments of deliberation, Bonce relents and chooses Zinkoff to be on his team.

Characters

• Donald Zinkoff: A well-meaning, overenthusiastic child who is constantly derided by his classmates due to his inability to do anything right.
• Polly Zinkoff: Donald's little sister, who teases him but loves him anyway.
• Zinkoff's Mother and Father: The loving and caring parents to Zinkoff who are always supportive of him.
• Andrew "Drew" Orwell: Zinkoff's pompous, spoiled neighbor. After he moves away in second grade, Zinkoff does not see him until middle school, where he has become one of the "cool" kids.
• Hector Binns: A strange classmate of Zinkoff who often looks into "The Beyond" and collects earwax in order to make earwax candles. Zinkoff helps him collect earwax, but Hector refused. Zinkoff becomes friends with him briefly but the friendship falls apart.
• Gary Hobin: An athletic, popular classmate of Zinkoff who is the first to call Zinkoff a loser after the failure at Field Day.
• Miss Meeks: One of Zinkoff's favorite teachers who, despite inwardly noting his atrocious handwriting, never complains about Zinkoff.
• Mrs. Biswell: Zinkoff's least favorite teacher who couldn't stand Zinkoff and once ordered him to leave school and never come back.
• Mr. Yalowitz: One of Zinkoff's favorite teachers who sympathized with Zinkoff and allowed him to sit in the front of the class.
• The Waiting Man: A resident of the nine hundred block of Willow Street, who never moves from his window. His brother was missing in action in Vietnam and the Waiting Man never stopped waiting for him, even after thirty years.
• Claudia: A toddler kept on a leash by her overprotective mother. At the climax of the story, she goes missing, prompting Zinkoff to look for her.
• The "Oh, Mailman" Lady: An extremely old woman on the nine hundred block of Willow who called Zinkoff "the mailman" after he went around delivering fake letters as a child. She invites Zinkoff into her house on Field Day and Zinkoff tells her everything about his life.
• Tuttle, Bonce, and Janski: Friends of Gary Hobin. At the end of the story, Bonce picks Zinkoff for his team, being the first to ever do so.

Trivia

Donald Zinkoff frequently displays the sign's of a child with Asperger's Syndrome, part of the Autistic Spectrum. His inability to make or keep friends, understand honesty, and his problems with fine and gross motor skills show that he may indeed be undiagnosed with the Syndrome, which is common with young children. The author may or may have not purposely made Donald's personality this way, but it is interesting that the reader can inference this fact.Jerry is a loser