Summary
Zinkoff is surprised to learn that every day of school sparks the same excitement as the first. At dinner in the evenings, his father asks what’s new, varying nicknames such as Boogaloo and Pookypoo, all of which tickle Zinkoff’s ribs and cause him to laugh. One day Miss Meeks uses the made-up word “Jabip” during a lesson. Zinkoff laughs so hard he falls from his chair. The teacher forbids the students from using the word because of the distraction it causes, but Zinkoff can’t help giggle when it jumps into his head. He continues to laugh about it at the dinner table, eventually trying his parents’ patience. When he laughs potato out of his nose, they send him to his room.
For the rest of the week, students wait until Zinkoff stops laughing before they say the word, setting him off again. Miss Meeks pins a large yellow button to Zinkoff’s shirt that says "I know I can behave." He wears it for an hour, not laughing once. Miss Meeks puts the button away, thinking her experiment is a success. However, he laughs again, so she pins the button to him once more. This continues for days. One day Miss Meeks leaves the class and, when she returns, Zinkoff informs her that he laughed when she was away. She realizes the button is not a punishment for Zinkoff, but a badge of honor, and so she punishes him by keeping the button in her desk.
Even without the button, Zinkoff loves school. One morning he is so excited for school that he wakes before his parents and walks to school alone. Waiting on the front steps for the school to open, he hears his father’s car coming along. His father tells him he is very big to have gone to school himself. However, there’s no school because it is Saturday. On Zinkoff’s final report card of the first grade, Miss Meeks writes that Zinkoff sometimes has a problem with self-control but he is good-natured, happy, and certainly loves school.
In the summer between first and second grade, Zinkoff acquires two new friends: a baby sister named Polly and a neighbor called Andrew, who is also six. His mother puts two silver stars on Polly’s diaper when she is born. Zinkoff asks what she did to deserve them. His mother tells him he can have two stars for having been born as well, but they’ll save them until a really bad day when he really needs them. He agrees to the deal. New neighbors move in a month later. Andrew’s mother Cherise explains that her son doesn’t want to come out because he is mad that they moved houses.
Zinkoff bakes a snickerdoodle cookie so large Andrew will want to come out and meet him. In the neighbor’s living room, Andrew perks up at the smell. But the cookie, as wide as a sheet pan, is too big and so it breaks on the floor. Andrew gets upset and returns to his room. Zinkoff gathers the pieces and spends the day eating them. When his father gets home, Zinkoff runs to him and throws up in his mailbag. The narrator comments that Zinkoff was born with an upside-down valve in his stomach, causing him to vomit several times a week. His father is angry. Zinkoff’s mother taught him to throw up into the nearest container, but never his father’s mailbag. She washes it and sweetens it with a splash of aftershave. That night Zinkoff eats a full dinner and throws up into one of his socks.
Zinkoff prefers to play soccer over other sports because it is a free-for-all. He plays for the Titans in the Saturday-morning Peewee League. Zinkoff spends entire games running after the ball but rarely catching up to it. He is nicknamed Wild Foot, swinging wildly but seldom connecting with the ball. He often kicks the ball at his own team’s net, and he cheers even when the other team wins. Other teammates kick the turf and pout after having lost. Zinkoff imitates the others, trying to be a better loser, pounding the grass and tearing it up. After a winning streak, during the last game of the season, the Titans win when the ball bounces off Zinkoff’s head and he unwittingly scores the deciding goal. Zinkoff is thrilled, but his neighbor Andrew, on the losing team, looks sad. Zinkoff gives Andrew the shiny gold trophy he won.
Mrs. Biswell, Zinkoff’s second-grade teacher, is annoyed when Zinkoff asks how many days are left until he graduates. He also gets in trouble for laughing, because nearly anything makes him laugh. Mrs. Biswell doesn’t like children and she never smiles. She hates sloppy students like Zinkoff. His letters swarm like ants over the page. She shouts that his handwriting is atrocious. Zinkoff thanks her, assuming the word is a compliment. Zinkoff is eager to participate in school despite his propensity to get questions wrong; Mrs. Biswell interprets this as a ploy to annoy her. One day Zinkoff is writing on the chalkboard. Mrs. Biswell enters the classroom and shouts at him to stop. The shock prompts Zinkoff to vomit over her prized chalkboard eraser.
Mrs. Biswell orders Zinkoff out of the classroom, saying “Get out of my classroom and never come back!” Zinkoff walks home without his coat, trembling. The principal privately reprimands Mrs. Biswell in his office. Zinkoff’s mother phones the principal to ask if he has been expelled. The principal says no, and Zinkoff is at school the next day before the janitor. For the rest of the school year, Mrs. Biswell combs through catalogs to find another fancy eraser. She buys a yellow plastic beach bucket and instructs Zinkoff to carry it with him should he need to vomit. He never throws up in it, but he uses it to carry his collection of interesting stones and pieces of colored glass.
Take Your Kid to Work Day arrives. As usual, the postal company won’t allow Zinkoff’s father to take Zinkoff in the mail truck, which only has one seat. Zinkoff’s father compromises by arranging to show his son his postal route on a Sunday. Zinkoff happily tells Andrew, whose father is a banker. Andrew says after his father gets a raise, the family will move and will be “never coming back to this dump.” On Sunday, Zinkoff writes his own letters to deliver and gets in his father’s clunker. They drive from house to house, Zinkoff getting out and putting letters through mail slots. A big kid opens the door at one house and insults the letter, saying it is just scribbles. Zinkoff isn’t sure how to respond, but he remembers his dad told him to always be nice. He wishes the boy a good day.
Zinkoff’s father parks the car for lunch. Zinkoff eats his lunch fast because he is eager to get back to work. His father instructs him to relax and savor his break from work. Zinkoff is disappointed that the weather is nice because he had been looking forward to having to deliver the mail in poor weather, like a heroic mailman. His father tells him about a man who stands by his window every day, waiting for his brother to return from the war in Vietnam. The man has been doing this for thirty-two years. At the end of Willow Street, Zinkoff delivers the last of his one hundred letters, shocked to notice his mailbag is empty. His father gives him five dollars pay for his work. Zinkoff pockets the money without looking at it and cries all the way home.
Analysis
Zinkoff’s difference and lack of self-awareness continue to cause problems in the seventh chapter. When Miss Meeks invents the word “Jabip,” Zinkoff laughs so hard he falls from his chair. Unable to understand that he is disrupting the learning environment with his genuine response to a funny-sounding word, Zinkoff fails to suppress his laughter. Zinkoff’s inability to control his body and mind even prompts judgment from his normally approving parents, who send him to his room when he laughs at dinner.
The themes of shame and rejection arise with Miss Meeks’s decision to pin a yellow button that reads “I know I can behave” to Zinkoff’s shirt. Miss Meeks rejects Zinkoff’s natural mirthfulness, which she interprets as a challenge to her authority. The button—a material reminder on his body that he has been singled out by the teacher—is supposed to discipline Zinkoff by making him feel ashamed of his behavior. However, in an instance of situational irony, the button makes Zinkoff feel proud. Lacking shame, Zinkoff subverts Miss Meeks’s expectations and only understands the button as a “badge of honor,” akin to the star stickers his mother doles out as encouragement.
Spinelli touches on the theme of judgment vs. approval with Zinkoff’s first-grade report card. Miss Meeks’s ambivalent opinion of Zinkoff is clear: she judges him for having little self-control but appreciates that he is good-natured and loves school. Again, Miss Meeks’s inability to acknowledge and accommodate Zinkoff’s neurodivergence is apparent. While she recognizes he struggles to conform to the norms of the classroom, she does nothing to consider what learning approaches might help Zinkoff better adjust to his environment. She chooses to hold him to the same standard as other students, despite knowing that his brain is wired differently than them.
During the summer, Zinkoff’s difference surfaces in his failed attempt to make friends with his neighbor and in his lack of coordination on the soccer field. The way Zinkoff’s brain is wired makes him not understand the point of competition, and so he is equally happy regardless of whether his team or the other team wins. At the same time as his difference makes him stand out, the theme of Zinkoff’s inherent kindness is on full display. Despite Andrew’s repeated rejections of Zinkoff, Zinkoff never takes on the rejections personally and is generous toward his neighbor, baking him a giant snickerdoodle and offering his trophy after winning the big game of the soccer season.
While Miss Meeks had been somewhat forgiving of Zinkoff’s difference, Mrs. Biswell does not like children and so is primed not to like children who require special attention. Zinkoff’s enthusiasm and inability to conform to the norms of the classroom prompts Mrs. Biswell to immediately judge him and reject the idea that he has any value or intelligence. Mrs. Biswell’s prejudice against underperforming students puts Zinkoff at a particular disadvantage when he clearly needs additional support within the classroom. Without that support, Zinkoff is left to apply himself as best he can but still receive barely passing grades.
In contrast to the constraints of the classroom environment, which showcases Zinkoff’s deficits, Zinkoff thrives while working his father’s mail route. Zinkoff’s indifference to competition means he is not concerned with money like Andrew. Rather, Zinkoff is thrilled to be of service to his community, delivering mail and getting to imagine who lives behind each door. Zinkoff even hopes for miserable weather the day he and his father set out, because he likes the heroic image of mailmen delivering no matter the conditions. In this way, Spinelli shows how Zinkoff has attributes and ethics that go unrecognized in a classroom where too much emphasis is placed on competition, judgment, and evaluation.
