Here is the surprise: Every day is like the first day to Zinkoff. Things keep happening that rekindle the excitement of the first day.
Although Zinkoff has little aptitude for schoolwork, he loves school and shamelessly participates as much as he can. In this passage, the narrator describes how the excitement of the first day of school is sparked anew every morning. The passage is significant because it reveals how Zinkoff's difficulties with school result not from a lack of willingness but from a lack of supportive accommodations within his learning environment. Zinkoff is so enthusiastic about school that he should be a top student. However, the system, as it is designed, cannot adapt to Zinkoff's learning disabilities, and so Zinkoff is doomed to receive low grades.
At this time in his life Zinkoff sees no difference between the stars in the sky and the stars in his mother’s plastic Baggie. He believes that stars fall from the sky sometimes, and that his mother goes around collecting them like acorns. He believes she has to use heavy gloves and dark sunglasses because the fallen stars are so hot and shiny. She puts them in the freezer for forty-five minutes, and when they come out they are flat and silver and sticky on the back and ready for his shirts.
In this passage, Spinelli reveals the depth of Zinkoff's imagination. To Zinkoff, the silver stars his mother gives him are not simply dollar-store stickers—they are no different than the stars in the night sky. He believes that the stars fall to Earth, shiny and hot, and that his mother collects them while wearing heavy gloves and dark sunglasses as protection. The passage is significant because it speaks to Zinkoff's profound mix of innocence and creativity, qualities that often go unrecognized by his teachers and classmates.
One day Miss Meeks has to leave the classroom for a while. When she returns she finds Zinkoff’s hand waving in the air.
“Yes, Donald?”
“Miss Meeks,” he says, “I laughed when you were gone.”
And she realizes at last that for Zinkoff the button is not a punishment at all, but a badge of honor. From then on she punishes him by keeping the button in the drawer.
When Donald can't stop laughing at every funny-sounding word that pops into his head, Miss Meeks pins a yellow button to his shirt. The button reads "I know I can behave myself." It is intended to discipline students who misbehave and act disruptively. However, Miss Meeks discovers in this passage that Zinkoff does not feel shame in the way other people do. Rather than discipline him, the button makes Zinkoff feel special. In an instance of situational irony, Miss Meeks realizes she must hide the button from Zinkoff if she really wants to punish him.
And he realizes that apparently there has been a mistake. Perhaps the tall boy was at the zoo on the same day Zinkoff was there. Perhaps he bought the giraffe hat first and left it behind by mistake. Whatever, there is no mistaking what the boy said: “It’s my hat.”
Zinkoff is sad. He has really come to love the hat that he thought was his. But he is not sad too, because he can tell how happy it makes the tall boy to get his hat back.
In this passage, Zinkoff reacts to being informed by a playground bully that his giraffe hat is not in fact his but belongs to the boy. Zinkoff doesn't understand cruelty or lying, and so his mind seeks to make sense of this mistruth. Zinkoff assumes the boy must have been at the zoo the same day his parents bought him the hat. While this new information makes him sad, he is ultimately too kind-hearted not to feel happy that the boy has been reunited with the hat, even though it has brought Zinkoff so much joy.
The words hit Zinkoff like a bear paw. His body flinches in three directions, he drops the eraser to the floor and throws up all over it.
“Out! Out! Out!” screams Mrs. Biswell. She stands in the doorway pointing down the hall. “Get out of my classroom and never come back!”
After Mrs. Biswell screams at Zinkoff to stop writing on her pristine green chalkboard, Zinkoff panics, involuntarily vomiting on her prized eraser. In this passage, Mrs. Biswell's unfair antipathy toward Zinkoff finally erupts. Although she is an adult and he an innocent child, she orders him to leave her classroom and never return. As someone who is never angry at anyone and always assumes good intentions, Zinkoff doesn't understand the hyperbole behind her pronouncement. He goes home and tells his mother that he has been banished from school forever.
Shortly after that comes a moment Donald has not expected. He reaches into the bag and feels nothing but leather. He takes it off and puts it on the sidewalk and peers into it. Nothing. Empty. He has delivered his one hundred letters. Many times he has imagined the start of Take Donald Zinkoff to Work Day; never has he imagined the end of it. ... Reluctantly Donald drags the bag to the car. He gets in. He does not take off the helmet. His father gives him his day’s pay. He puts it in his pocket without looking at it. He cries all the way home.
On the Sunday when Zinkoff gets to accompany his father on his postal route, Zinkoff is thrilled to be of service to the people in his neighborhood. However, Zinkoff is devastated once he delivers the last letter. The payment he receives for his work means nothing, and he weeps because he can no longer serve a purpose in his community. In this passage, Spinelli illustrates how Zinkoff's natural abilities and selflessness can translate into being an enthusiastic member of society. However, his natural talents tend to be overlooked in school, due to his poor athletic and academic performance.
In fourth grade Zinkoff is discovered. He has been there all along, of course, in the neighborhood, in the school, for ten years. He is already known as the kid who laughs too much and, until his operation, the kid who throws up. In fact, in order to get himself discovered, Zinkoff does not do a single thing he hasn’t already done a thousand times. As with all discoveries, it is the eye and not the object that changes.
In this passage, the narrator describes how the students around Zinkoff suddenly seem to notice how he is different. Although he has humiliated himself innumerable times in the lead up to fourth grade, something changes in the perception of the kids once they reach ten years old. Zinkoff's tendencies now mean something different. He is the same as has always been, but the collective "eye" of those around him has changed, leading him to be judged with crueler discernment.
Thanks to teacher Yalowitz, the first person to discover Zinkoff is Zinkoff. Unlike his teachers in grades two and three, this one seems delighted with him. He is forever making pronouncements that give Zinkoff new views of himself. Every morning the first week, for example, as soon as Zinkoff enters the classroom, the teacher proclaims, “And the Z shall be first!”
In contrast to Miss Meeks and Mrs. Biswell, Mr. Yalowitz recognizes Zinkoff's need for additional support and encouragement. He also seeks to draw out rather than punish Zinkoff's enthusiasm and willingness to take part in school even when he is asked to perform tasks outside his aptitude. The passage is significant because it speaks to how neurodivergent students like Zinkoff ought to have accommodations within the learning environment that help them thrive.
He looks up into his mother’s sad and happy smile. He says, “Who were they looking for?”
And reads the answer at once in her face, but waits anyway for her to say it:
“You, Donald. They were looking for you.”
After spending seven hours searching for Claudia, who he believed was lost, Zinkoff learns the next day that the police and emergency vehicle lights he saw were not evidence that the girl was still missing but rather a sign that people were out looking for him. In this passage, Spinelli reveals the situational irony behind Zinkoff's selflessness: He was so preoccupied with finding Claudia that it never occurred to him that anyone would worry about him being lost too.
But this kid won’t back off, and his stare is hitting Bonce like a football in the forehead. In those eyes Bonce sees something he doesn’t understand, and something else he dimly remembers. It occurs to him that he wants to ask the kid what it was like, those seven hours. He thinks he must be able to see them in the kid’s eyes, some sign of them, but he cannot. He wants to ask the kid what it was like, being that cold.
In the novel's final chapter, Spinelli's narrator shifts away from Zinkoff's point of view to that of Bonce, another boy on the playground. Bonce is irritated when Zinkoff doesn't get the message that no one has picked him to play football. Rather than slinking off in humiliation and shame, Zinkoff stands and stares back at Bonce. Bonce is destabilized by Zinkoff, who doesn't react in the way Bonce expects. Unwittingly, Zinkoff takes away the bully's power by not understanding the cruelty he is trying to inflict. Ultimately, Zinkoff's peculiarity intrigues Bonce and he wonders about what sort of person would stay out in the cold for seven hours to find a missing girl. In this way, Zinkoff's unique quality of selflessness is recognized by the bully, suggesting that Zinkoff's heroism will make people see him in a new light.
