Winner: Sydney Taylor Book Award for Older Readers 2002;
Winner: CLA Book of the Year for Children Award 2003;
Winner: Hackmatack Children's Choice Award for English Non-Fiction 2004;
Winner Flora Stieglitz Straus Award 2004;
Nominee: Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction 2002;
Nominee: Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee 2007
Hana's Suitcase by Karen Levine
When an anonymous Japanese donor decided that Japanese children should learn more about the Holocaust in an effort to contribute to global peace and understanding, it is unlikely that they had any idea of the impact of their philanthropy. The foundation of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre set off a chain of events which spans three continents, seventy years and continues to educate and enlighten well beyond Tokyo, or even Japan.
The focal piece of that museum is a very ordinary brown suitcase which sits in a glass case but which is taken out for the visiting children to wonder at. For even though it is empty, it has a remarkable story to tell. Painted on the outside are the words, 'Hana Brady. May 16, 1931, Waisenkind'. Words that spark questions like 'Who was Hana Brady?' 'Where did she come from?' 'Where was she going?' 'How did she become an orphan?' 'How did this suitcase get to Tokyo?' 'Why is it so important?'
Hana's Suitcase provides the answers to those questions and more, and gives a little girl, who wanted to be a teacher, not only a voice but the ability to teach children the world over, an accomplishment beyond her wildest dreams. It is the story of how the director of the museum, Fumiko Ishioka, felt that she would need actual objects from the Holocaust if she was to reach and teach Japanese children about it in a way that would engage them. For months she wrote letters to everywhere she thought might be able to offer her something until, at last, she was rewarded with a parcel from the Auschwitz Museum which contained a child's sock and shoe, a child's sweater, a can of Zyklon B poisonous gas and a suitcase. Inspired, she started a quest to find out who owned the suitcase, a quest which eventually leads her to Hana's brother, George who had survived and was living in Canada. This book is the story of that quest, interwoven with Hana's story and photos because the family photo album was the one thing that George had managed to save and preserve over the years. It is that story which touches and teaches so powerfully.
While it is realistic and sad, it is written with a light hand that realises that its audience does not want to be frightened or terrified by explicit details - but, nevertheless, it paints a picture of racism, marginalisation and segregation and what happens when it is taken to the extreme. It is written in a way that those who read it and recognise its events in their own lives - particularly the marginalisation of being different - and respond to it in that way.
-Fran Knight
Karen Levine is a prizewinning producer with CBC Radio. She worked for many years on CBC programs including As It Happens, The Sunday Edition and This Morning as producer of the “First Person Singular” series. Karen has won awards for her radio work, including two Peabody Awards(the Oscars of radio). Levine originally produced Hana’s Suitcase as a radio documentary and later made it into a book. Though she travels widely (most recently to Australia and Japan) to talk about the book, she makes her home in Toronto with her husband and her son.
GoodReads
A suitcase of a child murdered during World War 2 at Auschwitz concentration camp, is taken to Japan to be part of the Holocaust Museum, and one class researches its history.
-ReadPlus
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