Suzy And Leah By Jane Yolen Summary

The story "Suzy and Leah", by Jane Yolen is about two young girls who meet at school, one being an everyday school girl, and one being a German-born Jew who moved to America. At first, they didn't get along, but as the story progresses, they start to understand each other. Suzy always does good in school, and she must be doing too good because she gets placed to help with one of the refugees. The rudest, stubbornest one in her opinion. Leah is a refugee who came from Germany and has to learn how to assimilate into this new crowd of people, especially this girl named Suzy who she is placed with to work with on English. As the story goes on, Suzy and Leah start to understand why the other is as she is.
In the beginning, Suzy isn’t too fond of Leah. Leah always seems crabby and doesn’t want what Suzy offers. Suzy is just trying to be nice, but Leah won’t take it. Then, when they get paired together, Suzy is anything but happy. She even asks if she can trade. Why is it that she has to get stuck with the mean one. Suzy even invites Leah over for dinner in an effort to be nice, but Leah isn’t even grateful to her for that. What Suzy doesn’t understand is Leah’s reason for being like this. Leah feels as if she can’t trust Suzy. She sees Suzy as mean and fake.Throughout the beginning, and most of the middle of the passage, Suzy and Leah aren’t too …show more content…
One day Leah gets sick and has to go to the hospital. Suzy doesn’t understand why Leah wouldn’t tell anyone she was in pain. Until Suzy reads Leah’s diary and realizes why she acts the way she acts. Leah still believes everyone is against them, that what happened in Germany will also happen here. As an effort to act like a friend to Leah, Suzy gives Leah her diary to read and offers her green dress. In the end, they are still not best friends, but Suzy understands Leah better, and they seem to come to some kind of agreement on being