Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From renowned Newbery-winning author Jerry Spinelli comes a powerful story about how not fitting in just might lead to an incredible life. This classic book is perfect for fans of Gordon Korman and Carl Hiaasen.

Just like other kids, Zinkoff rides his bike, hopes for snow days, and wants to be like his dad when he grows up. But Zinkoff also raises his hand with all the wrong answers, trips over his own feet, and falls down with laughter over a word like "Jabip."

Other kids have their own word to describe him, but Zinkoff is too busy to hear it. He doesn't know he's not like everyone else. And one winter night, Zinkoff's differences show that any name can someday become "hero."

With some of his finest writing to date and great wit and humor, Jerry Spinelli creates a story about a boy's individuality surpassing the need to fit in and the genuine importance of failure. As readers follow Zinkoff from first through sixth grade, it becomes impossible not to identify with and root for him through failures and triumphs.

The perfect classroom read.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Loser Chapter One You Grow Up You grow up with a kid but you never really notice him. He's just there -- on the street, the playground, the neighborhood. He's part of the scenery, like the parked cars and the green plastic cans on trash day. You pass through school -- first grade, second grade -- there he is, going along with you. You're not friends, you're not enemies. You just cross paths now and then. Maybe at the park playground one day you look up and there he is on the other end of the seesaw. Or it's winter and you sled to the bottom of Halftank Hill, and you're trudging back up and there he goes zipping down, his arms out like a swan diver, screaming his head off. And maybe it annoys you that he seems to be having even more fun than you, but it's a one-second thought and it's over. You don't even know his name. And then one day you do. You hear someone say a name, and somehow you just know that's who the name belongs to, it's that kid. Zinkoff. Chapter Two The Bright Wide World He is one of the new fitter of boys tossed up by this brick-and-hoagie town ten miles by trolley from a city of one million. For the first several years they have been home babies -- Zinkoff and the others -- fenced in by walls and backyard chain-link and, mostly, by the sound of Mother's voice. Then comes the day when they stand alone on their front steps, blinking and warming in the sun like pups of a new creation. At first Zinkoff shades his eyes. Then he lowers his hand. He squints into the sun, tries to outstare the sun, turns away thrilled and laughing. He reaches back to touch the door. It is something he will never do again. In his ears echo the thousand warnings of his mother: "Don't cross the street." There are no other constraints. Not a fence in sight. No grown-up hand to hold. Nothing but the bright wide world in front of him. He lands on the sidewalk with both feet and takes off. Heedless of all but the wind in his ears, he runs. He cannot believe how fast he is running. He cannot believe how free he is. Giddy with freedom and speed, he runs to the end of the block, turns right and runs on. His legs-his legs are going so fast! He thinks that if they go any faster he might begin to fly. A white car is coming from behind. He races the car. He is surprised that it passes him. Surprised but not unhappy. He is too free to be unhappy. He waves at the white car. He stops and looks for someone to laugh with and celebrate with. He sees no one, so he laughs and celebrates with himself. He stomps up and down on the sidewalk as if it's a puddle. He looks for his house. It is out of sight. He screams into the never-blinking sun: "Yahoo!" He runs some more, turns right again, stops again. It occurs to him that if he keeps turning right be can run forever. "Yahoo!" Chapter Three Win Sooner or later the let-loose sidewalk pups will cross the streets. Running, they will run into each other. And sooner or later, as surely as noses drip downward, it will no longer be enough to merely run. They must run against something. Against each other. It is their instinct. "Let's race!" one will shout, and they race. From trash can to comer. From stop sign to mail truck. Their mothers holler at them for running in the streets, so they go to the alleys. They take over the alleys, make the alleys their own streets. They race. They race in July and they race in January. They race in the rain and they race in the snow. Although they race side by side, they are actually racing away from each other, sifting themselves apart. I am fast. You are slow. I win. You lose. They forget, never to remember again, that they are pups from the same litter. And they discover something: They like winning more than losing. They love winning. They love winning so much that they find new ways to do it: Who can hit the telephone pole with a stone? Who can eat the most cupcakes? Who can go to bed the latest? Who can weigh the most? Who can burp the loudest? Who can grow the tallest? Who is first ... first ... first ... ? Who? Who? Who? Burping, growing, throwing, running -- everything is a race. There are winners everywhere. I win! I win! I win! The sidewalks. The backyards. The alleyways. The playgrounds. Winners. Winners. Except for Zinkoff. Zinkoff never wins. But Zinkoff doesn't notice. Neither do the other pups. Not yet. Chapter Four Zinkoff 's First Day Zinkoff gets in trouble his first day of school. In fact, before he even gets to school he's in trouble. With his mother. Like the other neighborhood mothers of first day, first grade children, Mrs. Zinkoff intends to walk her son to school. First day is a big day, and mothers know how scary it can be to a six-year-old. Zinkoff stands at the front window, looking at all the kids walking to school. It reminds him of a parade. His mother is upstairs getting dressed. She calls down, "Donald, you wait!" Her voice is firm, for she knows how much her son hates to wait. By the time she comes downstairs, he's gone. She yanks open the door. People are streaming by. Mothers hold the hands of younger kids while fourth- and fifth-graders yell and run and rule the sidewalks. Mrs. Zinkoff looks up the street. In the distance she sees the long neck of a giraffe poking above the crowd, hurrying along with the others. It's him. Must be him. He loves his giraffe hat. His dad bought it for him at the zoo. If she has told him once, she has told him fifty times: Do not wear it to school. The school is only three blocks away. He will be there before she can catch him. With a sigh of surrender she goes back into the house. The first-grade teacher stands at the doorway as her new pupils come. "Good morning ... Good morning ... Welcome to school." When she sees the face of a giraffe go by, she nearly swallows her greeting. She watches the giraffe and the boy under it march straight to a front row desk and take a seat. Loser . Copyright © by Jerry Spinelli. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In a finely measured performance, prolific screen actor Buscemi brings an appropriately understated emotional current to Spinelli's tale about Donald Zinkoff, a generally happy, spirited and clumsy boy known to his classmates and neighbor kids as the biggest loser around. Though he has no real friends, can't seem to do anything right and is often misunderstood or even disliked by his teachers, Zinkoff never loses his positive outlook on life. By creating such an unusually good-natured protagonist, Spinelli can show the ugly, cruel behavior of other children without making Zinkoff into a pathetic victim. This tack may well encourage listeners to consider how they treat their friends, classmates and teammates. In a great balancing act, Buscemi's reading perfectly matches the book's poignant theme while at the same time conveying the sense of fun and adventure with which Zinkoff views the world. From the start, listeners will want to know how things turn out. Ages 8-12. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-6-Donald Zinkoff is a kid everyone will recognize-the one with the stupid laugh who cracks up over nothing, the klutz who trips over his own feet, the overly exuberant student who always raises his hand but never has the right answers. Following him from first grade to middle school, the story is not so much about how the boy changes, but rather how his classmates' perceptions of him evolve over the years. In first and second grades, his eccentricities and lack of coordination are accepted, but in third grade Zinkoff is "discovered." His classmates turn their critical eyes to him and brand him a loser. From then on, he endures the fate of so many outcasts-the last to be picked for the team, a favorite prey of bullies, and the butt of cruel comments from classmates. Despite his clumsiness and occasionally poor social skills, Zinkoff is a caring, sensitive boy with loving and supportive parents. He is remarkably good-natured about all the ostracizing and taunting, but his response is genuine. It is not navet or obliviousness that gives Zinkoff his resilient spirit-he's a kid too busy being himself to worry about what other people think of him. Although perhaps not as funny as Jack Gantos's little hellion, Joey Pigza, Zinkoff is a flawed but tough kid with an unshakable optimism that readers will find endearing. "Losers" in schools everywhere will find great comfort in this story, and the kids who would so casually brand their classmates should read it, too.-Edward Sullivan, White Pine School, TN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 3^-6. Poor Donald Zinkoff. What a loser--messy, clumsy, slow. And he's giggly--an all-purpose laugher, whether it's appropriate or not. Poor kid! He can't win for losing. And everybody knows it. Everybody except Donald, that is. As his second-grade teacher wrote on the back of his report card, Donald "is one happy child! And he certainly does love school!" Donald, it seems, loves everything; he's a sunshine bottle. Using a present-tense, omniscient narrative voice, Spinelli charts Donald's star-crossed course--from his troubled first day of school to an act of heroism that arguably earns him acceptance in sixth grade. It's impossible to dislike sunny, sweet-spirited Donald, and readers will doubtless be pleased by his victory--even though many will find it hard to believe that a normal child could be so relentlessly oblivious to his environment. Ultimately, this nagging question of credibility compromises the success of an otherwise fast-paced, engaging story. --Michael Cart

Horn Book Review

(Intermediate, Middle School) He's the kid who wears the three-foot-tall giraffe hat on his first day of school. The one who uses all the cookie dough to bake one giant snickerdoodle for his new next-door neighbor. He runs a little too slow, laughs a little too loud, and, due to an ""upside down valve in his stomach,"" throws up way too often. He's Donald Zinkoff, the latest (Maniac Magee, Stargirl) of Spinelli's larger-than-life protagonists. The present-tense, omniscient narrative follows Zinkoff from John W. Satterfield Elementary to Monroe Middle School, showing how an exuberant, somewhat eccentric boy can suddenly-here, in fourth grade, when judgmental ""big-kid eyes replace little-kid eyes""-be labeled a loser by his classmates. But readers will know better than that. We've seen him face down the furnace monster in the basement, befriend neighbors on nearby Willow Street, interact with his own (marvelously portrayed) family, and grow up bit by bit. It's a wonderful character study, though the story itself sometimes lacks subtlety. When Zinkoff unexpectedly aces a test and becomes, momentarily, the center of schoolyard attention (""The Z man!"" ""The genius!"" ""The Zinkster!""), the guileless protagonist may be fooled, but we don't need to be told that his congratulators are really just ""mocking him for blundering into the only A he is ever likely to get."" The conclusion of the novel, however, is admirably restrained. Zinkoff's efforts to find a little girl lost in a snowstorm don't make him a hero-in fact they make him even more of a laughingstock-but one boy, getting up a football game, looks at Donald and ""sees something he doesn't understand"" and can't stop himself from choosing Zinkoff for his side. He's beginning to see something the reader has known all along. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

Meet Joey Pigza's soulmate. Donald Zinkoff can't sit still, can't stop laughing, falls over his own feet, adores school and silly words and his family, is prone to throwing up due to a defective stomach valve, is impervious to peer pressure, and never frets about being perennially last in any competition just as he's last in the alphabet. Charging joyously into each day, Zinkoff baffles older kids by not responding properly to playground bullying or scorn, baffles teachers by combining eagerness to learn with an inability to produce anything but sloppy, mediocre work, and even throws his canny, loving parents for a loop sometimes. So he's a born loser, right? Not in a Spinelli novel. Readers who pay attention will come to understand after watching Zinkoff face an aggressive fourth grader on his first day of school, give up his first (and probably his last) sports trophy to console a classmate who had been on the losing team, and very nearly freeze to death on a misguided search for a missing child. Following Zinkoff from his very first foray into the front yard to middle-school sixth grade, the author of Crash (1996) and Stargirl (2000) once again provides such a steady look at a marginalized child that readers will see past limiting social categories or awkward outsides to the complex mix of past, present, and promise at the core of every individual. A masterful character portrait; here's one loser who will win plenty of hearts. (Fiction. 9-11)