Retelling: Loser

Author's note: This is a writing piece retelling the events that occurred in the novel Loser, by Jerry Spinelli. The purpose of this piece is to improve my score in retelling.

The kid that always stood out, and that no one liked ,doesn't care one bit about what other's thought of him. In fact, he was the boy who would do almost anything to make another person feel better. Meet Donald Zinkoff; an exotic first grader in Satterfield Elementary School just trying to learn as much as he can and grow up faster.

Donald is as excited as if he was about to meet the president of the United States for his first day of school. He just wants to know everything about everything and become a mailman just like his Father someday. He thinks he is a completely normal person but others think the opposite especially as he grows into the fourth grade and older. When he gets to the fourth grade field day, he loses big time for his team trying to impress everyone. After that, nobody from his team likes him the least bit. Donald doesn't care, but for the other's, school just kept on coming and that mean that they were forced to see him every day. Then one day, he meet a little girl named Claudia. Her mother keeps her wearing a backpack with a leash attached to it to keep her from wandering off.

Later on, there comes a big snowstorm in which Claudia wanders into the neighbors garage when her leash wasn't on and climbs into their car pretending to drive. All Donald saw though was police cars on the street and he heard little bits from distance that he interpreted as Claudia missing out in the snow. Really, the police found her several minutes ago but Zinkoff did not know that. He thought she was still running about outside trying to play hide and seek so he went after her. Six hours passed since he started looking and then he got too cold and tired and collapsed on the ground. Later he was gladly found by the snow plow man. When he woke up, he was at home safe and sound.

In the end, he is standing in line to be picked for a playground game of tackle football. All kids are chosen except for him in the line, but he doesn't care; he stares down a team captain, Drew (his old friend and neighbor), until Drew finally feels bad and picks him. As you can see, Donald doesn't end up too bad in the end, but his life growing up would definitely be a struggle without that fearless and caring personality.