ALOUD: Karen Levine

Journalist and broadcaster Karen Levine wrote Hana’s Suitcase in 2002 while producing a CBC radio documentary about Hana Brady, a young girl orphaned during the Holocaust. The book has since become the most awarded Canadian children’s book of all time, with editions published in 40 countries and translations in 29 languages. The 10th anniversary edition of Hana’s Suitcase includes bonus material in the form of updates from the author, commemorative art and music, and a recording of the CBC documentary in which Hana’s story was first told.

Meaghan Strimas lives in Toronto, where she works for the University of Guelph's Creative Writing MFA programme. She is the editor of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen and the author of two poetry collections.

In 1999, Fumiko Ishioka made a life-changing decision to trace the origins of a suitcase she received on loan from the Auschwitz Museum for exhibition at the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Centre, beginning a relentless search to find out just who Hana Brady—the owner of the suitcase—was. Based on the information Ishioka uncovered, Hana’s Suitcase tells the story of a young girl orphaned during the Holocaust as she is separated from her family and forced to struggle against Nazi persecution in a concentration camp during World War II.