Summary
Based on a Canadian radio documentary (included with the book as a CD), this story begins with an intriguing empty suitcase in a Tokyo Holocaust museum labeled with the name "Hana Brady," a date, and the German word for "orphan." The Japanese children become curious about the background of the girl who had owned the suitcase, prompting the curator of the museum to find out as much as she can. The book goes back and forth between Hana's childhood in Czechoslovakia and an account of the museum curator's detective work to unearth Hana's story and present it to the public. Hana was killed at Auschwitz but her one surviving brother was found and journeyed to Japan to meet the curator and the children. A 2004 American Library Association Notable Children's Book, winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries 2002 Sidney Taylor Book Award, and the Canadian Library Association's 2003 Children's Book of the Year Award.
Customer Reviews
Be the first to review this book!
Media Reviews
"Based on a radio documentary by the author aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Hana's story will captivate young readers as it unfolds."
-- Kirkus
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Co
Published date: 2003
Size: 7.75 x 9 inches
Weight: 1.2 pounds
Ages: 3 to 4
Pages: 111
Synopses
A biography of a Czech girl who died in the Holocaust, told in alternating chapters with an account of how the curator of a Japanese Holocaust center learned about her life after Hana's suitcase was sent to her.
Publisher's Notes
In March 2000, a suitcase arrived at a children's Holocaust education center in Tokyo, Japan. On the outside, in white paint, were these words: Hana Brady, May 16, 1931, and Waisenkind--the German word for orphan. Children who saw the suitcase on display were full of questions. Who was Hana Brady? What happened to her? They wanted Fumiko Ishioka, the center's curator, to find the answers.
In a suspenseful journey, Fumiko searches for clues across Europe and North America. The mystery of the suitcase takes her back through seventy years, to a young Hana and her family, whose happy life in a small Czech town was turned upside down by the invasion of the Nazis.
This book is based on Karen Levine's Canadian radio documentary, also called Hana's Suitcase.
Similar books
Surviving Hitler
by Andrea Warren
"Think of it as a game, Jack. Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis." Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack Mandelbaum is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps. Here, simple existence is a constant struggle, and Jack must learn to live hour to hour, day to day. Despite intolerable conditions, he resolves not to hate his captors and vows to see his family again. But even with his strong will to survive, how long can Jack continue to play this life-and-death game? Award-winning author Andrea Warren has crafted an unforgettable true story of a boy becoming a man in the shadow of the Third Reich.
A Bag of Marbles
by Joseph Joffo
Recounts how two Jewish boys in France--the author and his older brother--begin an odyssey of pain and terror when their father sent them off to the Unoccupied Zone with the warning that they must never admit that they were Jews.
Childtimes
by Eloise Greenfield
Three generations of black women remember their "childtimes" in this lyrical memoir spanning a century of American history. "The intimate details of loving and growing up and the honesty with which they are told will involve all readers, both black and white . . ".--School Library Journal.
The Avengers
by Rich Cohen
Describes the World War II accomplishments of a daring team of Jewish guerrillas, led by Abba Kovner and his chief lieutenants, two teenage girls, Vitka Kempner and Ruzka Korczak, their struggle in the ghetto and in the Baltic forests, their plan for revenge against the Nazis, and their efforts to build new lives for themselves as part of the new state of Israel.
A Hero of Our Own
by Sheila Isenberg
In 1940, a young Harvard-educated American named Varian Fry, inexperienced and not at all certain that he possessed any courage, went on a secret mission to Marseille. There, with only three thousand dollars and a list of names, he was to help those who had fled Nazi Germany and were now trapped in southern France. The list he took with him had been prepared by, among others, the Museum of Modern Art and Eleanor Roosevelt. It included most of the premier writers, painters, and scientists of Europe, many of them Jews—people like Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, Jacques Lipchitz, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel, André Breton, André Masson, and other sur- realists, and hundreds more. When Fry witnessed their plight, he became determined not just to give them immediate aid but to find ways for them to escape. Slowly he built up a group of people who could help, forging passports and finding secret paths across the Pyrenees into Spain and then to Lisbon. Fry himself was constantly in great danger, but he seemed to experience a divine inspiration, achieving greatness and glimpsing immortality by acting as the hero he never thought he could be. His own government tried again and again to stop him and send him home, but he managed to continue his rescue operations for more than a year. Only in the past decade has the world begun to honor Fry, who died in 1967. He is, for instance, the only American honored at Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” Using letters and records unavailable to anyone else, as well as interviews with numerous survivors, Sheila Isenberg has given us an inspiring story of how the brave and determined actions of one individual can help change the world.
|
0 items in cart
Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved. Some content for books is owned by Baker & Taylor, Inc. or its licensors and is subject to copyright and all other protections provided by applicable law.
