Hana's Suitcase, A Novel by Karen Levine

Levine, K. (2002). Hana's suitcase. New York: Scholastic, Inc, 111 pp.
Genre: Adolescent Literature, Biography, Non-Fiction.

Hana's Suitcase is a very engaging story about a young family experiencing the holocaust through the eyes of a child. This story is told from the point of view of the children of the Brady family, George and Hana. Both of these children were separated from their parents at a very young age and were later forced to separate from each other. This story tells a very tragic and devastating story as they experienced it. Because China does not teach about the Holocaust in their school curriculum, there are many museums in China that are dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust. Fumiko Ishioka took a job in 1998 as coordinator of a small museum in Tokyo called the Tokyo Holocaust Center. It was there that she formed a small group called the "Small Wings" and all of the children in the group were dedicated to learning about the Holocaust. Fumiko decided that the best way that she could teach her students was through showing them actual physical objects from the Holocaust. After much determination, and several letters and phone calls later to multiple museums, Fumiko had finally been sent some items from the Holocaust museum in Auschwitz. The kids became very fascinated with the suitcase they received that had the name Hana Brady on it. They were all determined to find the story of Hana. Through years of research and many visits to different Holocaust museums, Fumiko finally finds links to Hana's story and is in absolute shock when she finds out that her brother is still alive. Through George Brady, the story of Hana's life is told and honored in this book.

This book is written in a past to present format. As I learned about Hana's story, I also learned about Fumiko, the museum in Tokyo, and how this story came about being able to be told. The setting takes place at many different locations. It starts off in Nove Mesto, Czechoslovakia, where the Brady family resides. It is then in a Czech town called Terezin, where Hana and Brady spent most of their childhood being guarded and watched by Nazi guards day and night. The final setting takes place in Auschwitz at the concentration camp where Hana Brady spent her final days. At first is was kind of hard to keep up with how everything in the story connected, but it did not take long for me to put the pieces together. By the end I was dying to know how Fumiko had discovered Hana's story. This story is very effective in getting across the horror that was the Holocaust and describing how horribly the Jews were treated during that time. It would be great for younger adolescent readers because it is emotionally grabbing without being too descriptive of the actual events in detail. It does mention gas chambers and have some mention of how many Jews were killed, but it does not go into any graphic detail that might be scarring or inappropriate for a young reader. I think that adolescents could really connect with Hana's story because most of them know how it feels to be mistreated by someone at some point, or might have experienced discrimination based on their race, religion, etc. This story also gives young readers a chance to understand how wrongfully mistreated the Jews were during that time, and hopefully might get them to reconsider how they discriminate against others.

This book would be best used as an individual choice, small group, or whole group reading. I think that it could definitely have its place in the classroom, especially if students were learning about the Holocaust in a history class or something like that. I think that the appropriate age range would be between 11 and 15.

I personally loved this book and felt honored to get to hear Hana Brady's life story. I thought that it was put together really nicely and was very appropriately written for young readers. This book is definitely an emotional read, and would be especially so if you had ever lost a parent or sibling during your lifetime. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about how a child felt during the Holocaust and what that experience was like for them. I give it an A+.