Leon and the Spitting Image

During the school year, my friend Daniel recommended a book to me. It was called, “Leon and the Spitting Image.” This book is about a boy, Leon, who is very bad at doing things with his fingers. He is in the fourth grade and he cannot even tie his own shoelaces. In the beginning of the school year, he meets his new teacher, Mrs. Hagmeyer (the children call her “The Hag”). Mrs. Hagmeyer is not a normal teacher. She doesn’t teach math, science, and English. All she teaches is sewing. Unfortunately for Leon, he have never had success in any activity where the precision of the fingers is included. Naturally, he is horrible at it and according to Mrs. Hagmeyer, he has 2 s.p.i. (stitches per inch), the worst in the class. The average fourth grader can do 4 s.p.i. Soon, the principal is talking about keeping Leon back for a year, meaning that he might have to redo fourth grade. That is when the principal makes the best suggestion ever: “Leon, you should get some more sleep.” Before, Leon had always not gotten much sleep due to an old, broken-down ice machine that was always clicking and groaning and making noises. He asked some people to fix it so he could finally get some sleep. Each day, he was getting more and more sleep. All the extra rest paid off though. He was getting better and better at sewing. Soon he could do 6 s.p.i., above the fourth grade average. In the end of the year, Mrs. Hagmeyer wanted the class to create their own animile (what the teacher calls an “animal”). Leon makes his animile a model of Mrs. Hagmeyer. He works really hard on it and then brings it to school. He unintentionally gets spit on his animile. Leon then realizes that he had just created a spitting image, something that lets the owner control the person that it represents; in this case, Mrs. Hagmeyer. Since Leon could control the Hag, he make her do all sort of cool and embarrassing things. The best part of this book is when Leon presents his project and Mrs. Hagmeyer sayd that Leon had achieved 11 s.p.i. Then, Leon said that Mrs. Hagmeyer could keep his animile so she hugged him!