Book excerpt: Students deal with the concept of the human spirit and the importance of failure. Challenge students' comprehension of the novel with a variety of question styles and a final quiz. Students describe Zinkoff's self-image as it appears in the novel. Write a triangle poem about being a mail carrier. Find the synonym of vocabulary words found in the text. Students give their impressions of the teacher's speech on Zinkoff's first day of school. Understand the idea of "unconditional love" and its value in a parent-child relationship. Create a comic strip to highlight a brief incident from the story. Aligned to your State Standards, additional crossword, word search, comprehension quiz and answer key are also included. About the Novel: Loser chronicles the childhood of Donald Zinkoff, who is one of the most unusual, endearing characters ever to grace the pages of a novel for young readers. No matter what the game, Donald never wins. He trips over his own feet, constantly raises his hand without ever knowing the correct answer, and falls down laughing at the mention of any unusual word. The novel traces Donald’s journey from first to sixth grade. It details his important friendships, marks his relationships with different teachers, and describes how he copes with various shortcomings that everyone but Donald and his parents deem terribly important.