This book caught my eye because we had two copies of it and one was destroyed so I had assumed it may have been read a lot at one point. I thought it would be about a witch from the cover design, but that wasn't necessarily the case.
In this book, Leon lives in a quirky hotel with his mother who is the manager. They live in Manhattan and he takes a taxi to school every day collecting countries that the taxi drivers are from. At the start of Fourth Grade, Leon and his friends meet Mrs. Hagmeyer, a strange teacher with a penchant for wearing all black, a cape with glass eyes that change every day and a sour look on her face. She teaches them all about the virtues of Medieval living including how to stitch and sew Animiles that seem to disappear from the classroom. When Leon's spitting image doll of Mrs. Hagmeyer gets covered in gooey teacher spit, he suddenly finds that he has the power to control his teacher's actions. You can only image the antics that will ensue.
This was an interesting book to me. The characters were well-rounded and quirky and the plot pacing wasn't boring or slow, but the actual inciting incident didn't really get started until more than half way through the book when Leon actually makes the doll. With the misleading nature of the cover, having some voodoo like magical element seemed to fit with a theme I was expecting but because it happened so late in the story I was beginning to let go of any magical elements for this story. From an adult perspective, I didn't see what was so horrible about the teacher's teaching style beyond her looks and her sour face. I could see that either this was leading to an end that explained why she did what she did, which was predictable to me, or an ending that chalked her up to being horrible, which would have been disappointing to me. Because it had the predicted ending, I was satisfied and would hope that students would find her antics more unbearable as they would be looking from their perspective and not the teacher's. Overall an okay read but I wouldn't rave about it.
Interest level: Grades 3-6 Reading level: Grade 5
Genre: Fantasy, Friendship
Comparable Titles: Reminded me of Harriet the Spy for some reason. Probably the setting and the school yard going-ons.
Book Connections: Medieval Times, sewing, 7 Deadly Sins, Dodgeball, Jump Rope, voodoo
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