Not Nothing Gayle Forman

Before I start, I want to make it clear. He did something bad. Truly bad. I don’t want you to think I’m sidestepping that, or excusing it, or even forgiving it; it’s not for me to forgive, anyhow. But I’m telling you the story so you understand how he got where he did and how I got where I did and how both of us learned to rise to the occasion of our lives.

Alex, aged 12, has done something truly awful. The judge is giving him one more chance or one more opportunity. Alex hates that word and it's one the adults seem to use way too often. Now he finds himself at the Shady Glen retirement home: The Shady Glen residents were the living waiting to die. Places like Shady Glen are antechambers of death, the last stop where you wait for the Last Stop.

Because, honestly, no one had asked him if he wanted to be here. No one had asked him if he wanted another stupid opportunity. But, remembering what the judge had said about him throwing away chances ...

Alex is assigned work in the care home. He finds the residents weird and scary but even worse there is a young girl named Maya Jade also aged 12 who is working there - not as a community service order but as a volunteer - and she is bossy and opinionated and very annoying. The facility goes into lock down and Alex is sent to deliver meals to the residents. He meets Joseph “Josey” Kravitz aged 107 AND we meet him too because this book uses that appealing plot style of alternating voices so we can hear what Alex thinks and hear Josey. This is lucky in two ways because Josey is nonverbal (at least at the beginning of the book) and Josey is able to share the things he really 'sees' about Alex. Josey also opens up to Alex and over the following months he shares his own story - a harrowing story of love, loss and the holocaust.

Alex is suffering at home. He has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle. They are cold, disinterested and show Alex no love or affection. So 'home' is a misery. 

He lived on a lumpy couch with an aunt and uncle who did not want him. He had a judge who had warned him of last chances. He might go to juvie. And his mom… He hadn’t seen her in almost a year. He didn’t know if or when he would ever see her again. How could it get more permanently bad than this?

And the new school is also terrible. 'They' decide Alex is failing and so he is given special tutoring in maths. Alex is good at maths but he has totally switched off because everything in his life is so broken. He is so angry about the tutoring and the tutor. 

This book was published in 2024 and so here in Australia the hardcover edition is priced way beyond a school library budget. I read my copy on a Kindle but hopefully a paperback will arrive eventually. Not Nothing has won a Banks Street Award - Josette Frank Award 2025.  The Josette Frank Award for a work of fiction of outstanding literary merit for young readers in which children or young people deal in a positive and realistic way with difficulties in their world and grow emotionally and morally.

There is a raw honesty in this story - both in the story from Josey and from Alex. I cannot tell you exactly what Alex did but even though it is dreadful Gayle Forman has crafted a story that builds our empathy. I highly recommend Not Nothing for readers aged 12+.

Best-selling award winner Forman interweaves the tales carefully, with striking language and depth of feeling, allowing readers to understand the characters’ changing perspectives as they learn more about themselves and open up to people around them, many of whom become advocates and friends. Powerful, heartbreaking, and hopeful. Kirkus Star review

Book seller blurb: Alex is twelve, and he did something very, very bad. A judge sentences him to spend his summer volunteering at a retirement home where he's bossed around by an annoying and self-important do-gooder named Maya-Jade. He hasn't seen his mom in a year, his aunt and uncle don't want him, and Shady Glen's geriatric residents seem like zombies to him. Josey is 107 and ready for his life to be over. He has evaded death many times, having survived ghettos, dragnets, and a concentration camp--all thanks to the heroism of a woman named Olka and his own ability to sew. But now he spends his days in room 206 at Shady Glen, refusing to speak and waiting (and waiting and waiting) to die. Until Alex knocks on Josey's door...and Josey begins to tell Alex his story. As Alex comes back again and again to hear more, an unlikely bond grows between them. Soon a new possibility opens up for Alex: Can he rise to the occasion of his life, even if it means confronting the worst thing that he's ever done?

Here are a few text quotes:

For three days the boy cleaned banisters, safety rails, doorknobs, coffee tables, more doorknobs, Rummikub sets, book spines, outdoor tables, indoor tables, outdoor chairs, indoor chairs. The bleach stung his eyes, scraped his throat, and stole his appetite. The baloney sandwich his aunt packed him went uneaten. He would’ve thrown it away except he couldn’t bring himself to throw away food.

But then, as the months dragged on, his mom started to go to one of her bad places. He could recognize the signs as easily as the freckles across the bridge of her nose. He’d wake up in the morning and find her in the same chair she’d been in when he’d gone to bed, the TV on the same channel, the dinner he’d left out for her cold on the table. She didn’t cook any meals or eat the ones he put together.

“You shouldn’t separate them, because they love each other,” he continued in a halting voice. ...  So many people in Shady Glen had lost the people they loved, because their spouses had died or their children had moved away. When the people you loved left, that love remained, floating around, desperate for a place to go. And if it didn’t find a place to go… bad things happened. Love turned into anger, fear, hate. This was something the boy at twelve knew all too well. How did the grown-ups not see this?

“I’ll tell you why!” The words felt like a rocket countdown. Ten, nine, eight… “Because everyone who has promised me an opportunity has just made things worse. When I told the people at my old school about me and my mom, they all congratulated me on doing the right thing. Because now they had an opportunity to get us some help. I thought they meant food.” His voice began to crack, but the rocket was lifting off now, and there was no turning back. “But you know what they did? They made me go live with strangers and dragged my mom to a hospital and told her she’d have to get better if she wanted to be my mom. But if you know my mom like I do, you know she can’t stand to be stuck in one place. It’s why she moved so much. It’s why during the lockdown she got so much worse.”

I have also read this story where an elderly character also shares their holocaust experience. This one is for a slightly young audience - 10+.

My Name is Hamburger by Jacqueline Jules

My Name is Hamburger is a verse novel. Jacqueline Jules packs a lot into this short book - Jewish culture, discrimination, hopes and wishes, friendship complications, bullies, belonging, making new friends, Holocaust survivors, school life and family life.

The year is 1962 and Trudie's parents are holocaust survivors and Jewish. Her father owns a printing business and her mother stays home to look after her new prematurely born baby brother. 

I like how my family sit at our round table

just eating a tasty food, not a last name

I wish didn't go with my first.

Trudie has a very special friend who lives nearby named Lila. They have been friends since they were babies. Trudie excels at spelling and so as this story opens she is competing in her school level competition. Trudie is in grade four. She and her dad have been studying hard for this. She spells homogenous and makes it to the final round of two contestants but then the judge gives her a word with a silent letter - rhythm.

Like a gherkin.

That little green pickle

Kids like to crunch

This gives rise to more dreadful teasing by one horrid boy in her class - Daniel Reynolds. Trudie is so disappointed about the spelling bee but there is the hope she can compete again next year - she did make it through five rounds. I loved the way her teacher celebrates her achievement. 

School should be a happy place for Trudie but every week there is the problem of the music class. Trudi cannot sing the Christian songs and so she spends her time in the library. She loves being with the librarian Mrs Nolan, doing tasks like shelving books from A to Z. It is lucky because Trudi loves to read and she is getting close to the target on fifty books on the class reading chart. She didn't win the spelling bee perhaps she can win the reading trophy. Then a new boy arrives. He is also subjected to racial taunts because he is thought to be 'Chinese'. In fact he was born in the US.

Meanwhile Lila seems to have found a new friend. A pretty and popular girl named Sue Ellen. Young modern readers might be shocked when they read that Trudie cannot be invited to Sue Ellen's birthday party because as a Jewish child and so she is not allowed into the Colburn Country Club. The new boy, Jerry Braswell, who lives next door also used to be her friend but then he joined up with Daniel Reynolds. They taunt the girls and one day they throw water bombs at them on their way home:

Only red balloons, scattered

in little pieces all over the street

along with my trust

in mothers who understand

Trudie loves doing things with her father. Her mother is always distracted by the baby. They decide to plant a cherry tree in their garden but then Trudie comes home one day and the little plant has been destroyed. Not long after this her father has a dreadful accident and he can no longer work.

Her father does not tell Trudie much about the holocaust but he does offer some wisdom:

"He says 'hate' starts with separation and grows bigger, until it turns to stones angry people throw through windows. ... Daddy doesn't like the way I say that word 'different'. Doesn't like when it pulls people apart, puts some on a pedestal and others in the dirt."

"In my life ... I've seen people turn their backs when others suffer. But today ... true neighbours show me the best of what people can be."

I read My Name is Hamburger on a Kindle but this 2022 book is still available in paperback. Here is an interview with Jacqueline Jules. And here is a review from the Jewish Book Council.

Bookseller blurb: Trudie Hamburger is the only Jewish kid living in the small southern town of Colburn in 1962. Nobody else at her school has a father who speaks with a German accent or a last name that means chopped meat. Trudie doesn't want to be the girl who cries when Daniel Reynolds teases her. Or the girl who hides in the library to avoid singing Christian songs in music class. She doesn't want to be different. But over the course of a few pivotal months, as Trudie confronts her fears and embraces what she loves--including things that make her different from her classmates--she finally finds a way to say her name with pride.

The Key from Spain by Debbie Levy illustrated by Sonja Wimmer

"Long ago, in a place called Al-Andalus in the land of Spain, there was a time of dazzling music and science, art and poetry, map-making and mathematics, and harmony among neigbors - Muslims, Jews and Christians."

In 1492 Jews were expelled from Spain. The Altarases moved to Turkey and then to Bosnia. They took two precious things with them - a key and their language - Ladino - a blend of many languages from Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic. Living in a small mountain village in Bosnia, the Altaras family grew. Flory's family loved to sing especially Sephardic (songs in Ladino) and Bosnian melodies. Eventually her family moved to Zagreb and her father bought Flory a harmoniku (Piano accordion). When the war came the family moved to Split where they lived as refugees.  After the war Flory married and moved to America. Perhaps you are wondering about the key - you need to read this book to discover that part of the story. 

This is the story of Flory Jagoda (nee Altaras) and her music. Flora was born in Bosnia in 1923. As a young woman, after World War II, Flory went to work in Italy. She married a US Solider and moved to America. Just before she moved, Flory received the news that forty-two members of her family had been killed in the holocaust. Every part of this story was new to me - that is the wonderful thing about Picture Book biographies - you always meet such interesting people who are perhaps not famous. 

The writing is poetic and lyrical, effortlessly weaving centuries of history into the story while maintaining a strikingly intimate tone. Wimmer’s illustrations are nuanced, and readers will enjoy discovering new details upon each rereading of the book. School Library Journal

Fortunately for me, Flory has a fascinating story, and one that I think readers can relate to — in her love of her family, friends, music, and fun. And in dealing with challenge and loss. Debbie Levy talking with Jules at Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast.

You can hear Flory and her Eight Little Candles song - Ocho Kandelikas - a Ladino Hanukkah song here. 

Here is the website for Debbie Levy. I sought out this book because I loved a previous book illustrated by Sonja Wimmer - The day Saida Arrived. 

52 Mondays by Anna Ciddor

This book is based on Anna Ciddor's childhood memories. Anna, living in 1960s Australia, borrows a book from the library:

"Hitty, the life and adventures of a wooden doll."

Anna's love of this book and the doll called Hitty drives the plot as she searches every week at a local antique auction house for a doll like Hitty.  I was utterly convinced this was not a real book - but it is! It won the Newbery Medal in 1930. I think the real title might be Hitty, the first hundred years. It is  by Rachel Field. Perhaps in Australia it had a different title.

I think Anna would be thrilled to discover someone produced a sewing pattern for Hitty dolls and that you can even find Pinterest collections about her.

If you have an adult friend who was a child in the 1960s then this book - 52 Mondays would make an excellent gift. I have discovered Anna and I are almost the same age and because this book is based on her own childhood I recognised so many of these:

• Milk deliveries by horse and cart
• Birds pecking the tops of the milk to get the cream
• Vita wheat biscuits with butter and vegemite
• Deb mashed potato
• Green grocer shops where your purchases are put into paper bags
• That same grocer spinning the paper bag so the corners twisted into neat seals
• Listening to The Children's hour on the radio
• Cleaning the black board duster at school
• School milk
• Sewing at school
• Lollies from the milk bar - violet crumbles, lolly teeth, fruit tingles, and best of all lolly cigarettes

My favourite memory comes in Chapter 32 when Anna talks about putting a tennis ball into the end of an old stocking and hitting it against a wall while chanting a rhyme.

I am not supposed to include text quotes because I have read an Advanced Reader Copy of 52 Mondays but I cannot resist this line:

"Anna went on reading Hitty every moment she could. She tried to slow down and make the book last longer, but too many exciting things kept happening."

If you are a librarian or a Teacher-Librarian make sure you read Chapter 28. Memories of catalogue drawers, due date slips, book pockets and having a date stamped on your own hand!

The structure of 52 Mondays with Anna waiting for Monday each week when she can go to the auction house hoping to find an antique doll means the plot moves along at a pleasing pace and I liked the way each chapter reads as a distinct story. The addition of Jewish family traditions added to my interest.

This book is a companion volume to an earlier title by Anna. I had The Family with two front doors on my too read pile for over a year. I have not yet read it and now it has disappeared. Perhaps I gave it to a friend for her library. Now I will have to retrieve it. Oddly the reviews of this one wildly disagree about the audience. Sue warren of Just So Stories says 12+, Ms Yingling says it might not appeal to her Middle Grade students, and Megan Daley will or has used this with her Grade Six Book Club girls.

Anna loves dolls and doll houses. I was desperate for a dolls house when I was a child but I did have some very special dolls. Here is one of them: