Donald Zinkoff is unique. He is an oddball eccentric who loves to run but is the slowest kid in his grade, enjoys school but rarely gets an A, and cares about other people but rarely has any friends. His childhood task isn’t so much to fix these things as simply to accept himself as he is.

Donald thinks about others and their happiness, and he tries to do nice things for them, but these attempts fail, or people don’t appreciate the efforts. In second grade, he tries to be nice to his neighbor Andrew, but his attempt to bake him a giant snickerdoodle cookie fails when the cookie crumbles apart in front of Andrew. Donald loves to run, and in soccer he can do so with abandon, but he’s nearly useless as a player. Completely by accident, he heads a ball into the net during the final moments of the Peewee soccer championship and becomes an unlikely hero. Andrew, on the losing side, sulks until Donald gives him his winner’s trophy; Andrew accepts it like it belongs to him. Donald’s fifth-grade effort to make friends with another student also fall apart, though Donald does his best to be a good companion.