J e r r y s p I n e L l I

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J E R R Y S P I N E L L I
L O S E R  

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Pop 

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Contents 
1. You Grow Up 
1
2. The Bright Wide World 
3
3. Win 
5
4. Zinkoff’s First Day 
8
5. All Aboard 
13
6. A Wonderful Question 
18
7. Jabip 
28
8. Two New Friends 
34
9. Champions! 
42
10. Atrocious 
50
11. Mailman 
60
12. The Nine Hundred Block of Willow 
71
13. Waiting 
78
14. The Furnace Monster 
84
15. Discovered 
94
16. Field Day 
101
17. What the Clocks Say 
109

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18. Best Friend 
119 
19. The Candy in His Hand 
127
20. Nowhere 
133
21. Something Hard and Thorny 
143
22. Boondocks Forever 
154
23. Vanished 
161
24. Snow 
170
25. “Claudia…” 
177
26. What a Kid Is 
181
27. Himself 
187
28. Grounded 
197
29. Still There 
206
30. “Zinkoff” 
211
About the Author 
Praise 
Other Books by Jerry Spinelli 
Credits
Cover 
Copyright 
About the Publisher 

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1 . 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. 

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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.