Leon and the Spitting Image

Written by Allen Kurzweil

Narrated by Mark Linn-Baker

Leon and the Spitting Image is about a hotel full of animals. It's about an evil ice maker. It's about glass eyeballs and human catapults. It's about really old panty hose and Possibly Fake Hair.

But mostly it's about Leon Zeisel and his epic quest to survive fourth grade. What's stopping him? Two things. First, there's Miss Hagmeyer. She's a supernaturally strict teacher with ears that resemble giant rotting mushrooms. And then there is Leon's archenemy, Lumpkin the Pumpkin, a human tank with a deadly dodgeball throw known to all as the sidewinder.

Luckily, Leon has two friends, Lily-Matisse and P.W., who will stand by him no matter what -- even if his magical, mysterious plans for rescue and revenge involve . . . SPIT!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: May 10, 2005
• ISBN: 9780060845896

Allen Kurzweil

Allen Kurzweil is a prize-winning novelist, children's writer, inventor, and journalist. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Smithsonian, and Vanity Fair. He is a graduate of Yale University and the recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Reviews for Leon and the Spitting Image

[jeremycarlson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Leon is going into the fourth grade, nervous and scared. He meets his friends there which are P.W, and Lily-Matisse. They end up meeting their fourth grade teacher, Ms.Hagmeyer. They call her the Hag because, well she really is a Hag. Ms. Hagmeyer is obsessed with sewing and even has a threatening needle she uses to point at students. It ends up that Leon is falling behind in her class, she is mean and does not know how to teach regular circular subjects. Leon is very bad in sewing and eventually gets sent to the principal for falling behind. His friends notice something fishy about Ms.Hagmeyer. They notice that every time that they make a project that they have sewn, it gets thrown in a medal box, which she takes to her car for some odd reason. Lily-Matisse's mom is an art teacher at the school and she over heard Ms. Hagmeyer telling other teachers that she will take these projects and send them. Lily-Matisse told her two friends and they thought that she sells the sewing projects for money. They calculated it out and if she sells each project for 5 bucks she would have a thousand by the end of the ear. Leon and his friends try to figure out something until Leon has to make a master piece, and makes one of his teacher, Ms.Hagmeyer. He eventually notices that when he moves the doll, so does Ms. Hagmeyer.My opinion about this book is it was very slow. It took the author to get to the point, basically in the middle of the book. Allen Kurzweil had a good idea to put the main idea in, but really didn't get to that point. This frustrated me a lot, when I was expecting an unanimous action, nothing happened in this book at all. On the good side of this book I thought it was a very good idea by the author to put in creativity when Leon find out that he can control his teacher with a doll.

[sparklegirl_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was a little long and about halfway through the book I thought "Okay, the problem is solved so, what is the next half of the book about?" It was very good though.