Hana's Suitcase on Stage

The remarkable true story, international best-seller and much-loved book is now ready for the stage! 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 had happened to her? They wanted Fumiko Ishioka, the centre'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 was the story that sparked the amazing success of "Hana's Suitcase".

Since its initial publication in 2002, the book has won more awards than any Canadian children's book of the last 30 years.

It has been translated into dozens of languages, changed thousands of lives.

Now, with its amazing true-life story adapted by a prize-winning playwright, "Hana's Suitcase" is ready for live theatre. This book includes the complete script of the play, as premiered in March 2006 at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto together with the full text of the original story.

Children and adults alike will be deeply touched at this opportunity to delve further into the story of "Hana's Suitcase", both by reading it and by acting it out.