Books about Suitcase from Amazon.com

"A stunning achievement [that] . . . illuminates the tragedy of our treatment of those with mental and emotional problems."-Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America

More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients' belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. In this fully-illustrated social history, they are skillfully examined and compared to the written record to create a moving-and devastating-group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

Darby Penney is a leader in the human rights movement for people with psychiatric disabilities.

Peter Stastny is a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker.

Lisa Rinzler is a prizewinning cinematographer.

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Price: $15.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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..
Price: $5.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Since its publication in 2002, the story of Hana Brady has captured the hearts and minds of schoolchildren and adults around the globe. Now with its March 2006 world stage premiere at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto, Hana's story has come alive even more. Hana's Suitcase On Stage is a unique volume that combines the story and images of the original book by Karen Levine with the complete script of award-winning playwright Emil Sher's theatrical adaptation. It's a must-read -- and a must-act -- for teachers and schoolchildren from coast to coast..
Price: $9.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the author of the well-received Good Luck Gold and Other Poems comes this new collection of perceptive, touching, often amusing poems.

With a sense of pride in her Korean, Chinese, and American background, Janet Wong's poetry reflects some of the differences between Chinese and Korean customs and culture and the American way of life. Divided into three sections -- Korean, Chinese, and American -- and with the author's own explanation as to how the poems developed from experiences in her own life, these poems speak directly and simply to young people of many ethnic backgrounds, providing insights into the different kinds of prejudice that many children confront today. Here is "Poetry":

"What you study in school?" my grandfather asks./ "Poetry," I say, climbing high to pick a large ripe lemon off the top limb./ "Po-tree," he says. "It got fruit?".
Price: $72.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Roving the lonesome highways in search of fresh baseball talent in 1942, New York Yankees scout Mac "Suitcase" Sefton discovers a once-in-a-lifetime talent in Jerry Yamada. The young left-handed pitcher seems poised to take his place among the pantheon of major league pitching greats. However, he's being held indefinitely in a Japanese American internment camp, and he's not even certain that he wants to play professional baseball. Caught behind barbed wire in a camp in Arizona, Jerry, his lovely sister, Annie, and their old-world parents make the best of their confinement while Sefton schemes to find a way to free Yamada and convince him to play for the Yanks.

Sefton's interest in Yamada and his family changes from professional to personal when he accepts an offer to join the Yamadas for tea in their primitive quarters in a converted army barrack. Sefton's respect for their strength and the values they hold dear develops and deepens as he begins to see how his own lifestyle contrasts with the Yamadas'. A profound change takes place in him as he discusses freedom and the future with Annie. As a result, the relationships between the scout and the Japanese American family strain and strengthen as they share their cultures and lives.

Amid baseball, racism, and hope, Sefton and the Yamadas rediscover the American dream..
Price: $11.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Poet, teacher, essayist, anthologist, songwriter and singer, Naomi Shihab Nye is one of the country's most acclaimed writers. Her voice is generous; her vision true; her subjects ordinary people, and ordinary situations which, when rendered through her language, become remarkable In this, her fourth full collection of poetry, we see with new eyes-a grandmother's scarf, an alarm clock, a man carrying his son on his shoulders.

Valentine for Ernest Mann

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter and say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like you spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know..
Price: $4.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Although there are many children's books about divorce, few move beyond bland therapeutic preaching into the realm of well-told stories. This one does. A hard look at joint-custody life, The Suitcase Kid follows Andrea West and her tiny stuffed rabbit, Radish, through the painful adjustment of being a kid with divorced parents. She must leave the home she loves with the mulberry tree in the front yard, and deal with parents who still fight, step parents, step siblings, two different bedrooms (neither of which is really hers), loneliness, and an acute longing for the past. Her grades sink. Her friends drift away. And she's not quite sure how to fix any of it.

Wisely, Jacqueline Wilson doesn't offer instant solutions; rather, she chronicles Andy's journey to the beginning of equilibrium in her new life. Things will never be the way they were, but, as the book suggests, they'll get better over time. And because it's well written and honest, The Suitcase Kid will appeal to any child who enjoys realistic fiction, not just those who "need" to read a book about divorce. (The publisher recommends the The Suitcase Kid for ages 8-12, but it could easily serve kids who are a couple of years younger or older.) .
Price: $2.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]