Leon's Lesson - Marie Zhang - ★★★

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AUTHOR: Marie Zhang
ILLUSTRATOR: Hibah Habibah
GENRE: Children's Picture Book
PUBLICATION DATE: January 22, 2022
RATING: 3 stars.

I liked the idea of this book but didn’t care much for the implementation.

The story centres around Leon, who is very nervous on his first day at school. Inside his classroom, he notices that his classmates own some cool things. He decides to filch these objects, assuming that the other kids won’t be bothered. However, when his own pen goes missing, he realises how it feels to lose a favourite object and decides to return whatever he took.

As I said, the idea is excellent. Kids need to think in terms of empathy and the book offers this lesson in a great way. The illustrations are pretty nice.

However, I wasn’t a fan of the writing style and plot structure:
• The book is written in rhythmic verse, which seems very forced on almost every page.

• The fact that it was Leon’s first day at school and he was nervous has nothing to do with the rest of the story. In fact, he doesn’t seem nervous at all while stealing the objects and even looks with disdain at the kids searching for their belongings.

• I would have loved to see Leon apologise personally to the kids rather than slipping an anonymous handwritten note saying “Sorry”. He didn’t seem to face any repercussions for his actions.

• On a couple of pages, the verse order didn’t make sense and/or didn’t fit in with the illustrations.


All in all, great message but the implementation could have been far better.

My thanks to Books to Hook Publishing, LLC. and NetGalley for the DRC of “Leon's Lesson”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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