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.

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)

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

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

(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.