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+.

The Red Piano by André Leblanc illustrated by Barroux translated by Justine Werner

"In the hut, the cramped rooms reek of warm sweat, the foul smell of extinguished coal fires and packed earth. Crammed together, the comrades are already sleeping on the bare ground. Taking small careful steps, the young girl leaves the communal house."

"The music rises, free yet encased by the thick walls. Tonight marks the end of her fifth year in exile. ... pianos are criminal. Pianists are criminals. Schools are closed down. The Communist party is re-educating everyone."

How did they manage to bring a piano to this desolate place? How can this little girl practice each evening? Where will she get her music? And - most awful of all - what will happen when she is discovered?

Discover the answers in The Red Piano but be prepared to have your heart broken. 

The Cultural Revolution was started by Chinese leader Mao Tstung in 1966 to make China's people follow his idea of the way they should live. ... Young people left school and became Red Guards, roaming the country to search for and destroy the 'four olds' - old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. People, like the little girl in this book, were sent to the countryside to work with the peasants. (from the preamble)

"For seven years now, educated young people have been going to re-education camps, occasionally with enthusiasm but more often under duress. Their mission: to eradicate elitism through manual labour alongside poor farmers and by studying Chairman Mao's political works."

There are several things I miss now that I no longer work in my school library. I desperately miss reading aloud to groups of students. I miss sharing books with individual readers. And I miss creating lessons to unpack complex books like this one which I read to groups of our Grade Six students as a part of their work on Asian studies. Read this review for more plot details. 

This extraordinary (I don't use that word lightly) story was inspired by the true story of girl who grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Her name is/was Zhu Xiao-Mei. I first read this book several decades ago but the story has lingered with me. I highly recommend this for readers aged 11+ and for all high school libraries. 

Dazzling collage, pencil and paint illustrations from Barroux create a beautiful chiaroscuro of tension and release. Kirkus

Bookseller blurb: Stirring and inspiring, this picture book relates the story of a gifted young girl's passion for the piano in a time of historic turmoil. During China's Cultural Revolution a young girl is taken from her family and sent to a far-off labor camp. Forbidden to play the piano, she nevertheless finds a way of smuggling handwritten music into the camp and sneaking away at night to practice a piano in a secret location—until, one night, she is caught. Inspired by the amazing true story of international concert pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei, this acclaimed picture book poetically relates an astonishing story of perseverance set against a cataclysmic period of history.

I thought about this book all over again when I recently read Alias Anna because Anna is a musician and while music saves her it continually also threatens to expose her as a Jewish child. I also thought of Mao and the Cultural Revolution when I read Two Sparrowhawk's in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim. And I thought of the similarities of the historical context from The Red Piano when I read My Brigadista Year by Katherine Paterson.

The Red Piano was published in 2008 so yes, it is out of print, but this book is sure to be in many school and public libraries. I picked up my copy at a recent charity book sale.

Prisoner of ice and snow by Ruth Lauren

"For the crime of attempted murder of a member of the royal family in the realm of Demidova, I sentence you to life in prison, beginning in Tyur'ma"

I have said this on previous occasions but I just marvel at the inventiveness of authors and the power of words to take the reader right inside a scene.  Prisoner of Ice and Snow is simply a splendid and utterly engrossing book. I actually gasped out loud at one point when Valor faces yet another terrible danger.

Political stability in Demidova relies on the return of an elaborate music box to the rightful owners from the neighboring kingdom of Magadanskya.  The treasure has been stolen and Valor's twin sister Sasha has been found guilty and sent to the notorious prison built to hold children under 16 called Tyur'ma.  This is a terrifying place with huge tattooed guards and no one has escaped in 300 years but Valor knows she must commit a crime, be captured, be sent to the prison and then she will rescue her sister.

Valor picks the state occasion when the music box is to be returned (it has been stolen but the ceremony is proceeding) to attempt an assassination of the Prince.  She is such a skilled archer she actually has no intention of killing him and her arrow strikes just to one side but this is enough to send every guard in a race across the city to capture her.

Once inside the prison Valor discovers it is far worse than she imagined. 

"You will work in the mines, or anywhere else in the prison we tell you to.  You will eat when you are told to, you will sleep when you are told to, you will work when you are told to. If you reach the age of sixteen ... you will be transferred to the adult prison ... If you are caught with contraband items you will be punished.  If you cause trouble ... you will be punished."

Valor is punished over and over again.  The worst is when she and her sister are both placed inside ice domes.  The cold is unbearable and the writing so powerful I felt frozen too.

Valor does manage an escape but the real tangle in this book comes from decisions about who to trust and who is an informer.  I really had no idea about this until quite near the end and so, early on in the story, I decided to trust no one.  Valor does not follow this advice and so she and her sister are placed in dangerous and distressing situations over and over again.

Here is an alternate cover and the one from the German edition.  It is always interesting to see how different book designers approach a text.

Take time to read the Kirkus review which mentions the promise of a sequel.  I now discover the sequel it will be available early in 2018.

One real strength of this book comes from the vivid descriptions of people and places.  Here are a few examples :

"The queen sat highest on a silver throne inset with pearls and backed by a huge fan of hundreds of peacock tail feathers. She wears her official robes of justice, deep blue with gold brocade on the cuffs and collar."

"The prince's cloak is clasped at the throat with a golden fist, revealing the high-collared peacock-blue tunic her wears underneath ... gold embroidery covers the front of it all the way up to the collar, which stands stiffly around his neck."

"The doctor takes my hands and smears the contents of another bowl over my skin.  It tingles, then soothes, taking the fire out of the burns. ... She wraps soft white bandages  around my palms and each of my fingers."

I rarely give ratings but this is a five out of five, ten out of ten, totally perfect book which all avid readers should rush out and grab today.  Prisoner of Ice and Snow is Ruth Lauren's debut novel which excites and amazes me. I eagerly await more books form this talented UK author.  Here is an interview with Ruth.

I would follow Prisoner of ice and snow with Fearless by Tim Lott and The wolf wilder by Katherine Rundell.

This fresh and exciting middle-grade debut effortlessly melds an unforgettable protagonist, a breathless plot, and stunning world-building—and is impossible to put down. Night Owl Book Cafe

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

She cannot chain my soul.

We have had Chains in our library for over a year but oddly I kept bringing home the sequel.  As is my usual pattern I thought I might read a chapter or two before bed.  At 3am I was still reading and by 11am the next day (after a little sleep) I finished this breathtaking book.  I don't give ratings but this is a ten out of ten book.  I can hardly wait to read the rest of the trilogy.

Before you read my thoughts about Chains click on this podcast and listen to the first section where four US students talk about their reactions to this book and you can also hear from the author.

Coming from Australia I am largely ignorant about the American revolutionary war of 1776 and I knew nothing about the events in New York city.  Thanks to Laurie Anderson I not only feel I know a lot more but I feel as though I have truly been transported back in time as a witness. More importantly I have 'walked in the shoes' of a slave gaining a little insight into these events from her point of view.  Laurie Anderson is able to touch every sense with her writing.  I could hear, see and even smell every scene.

Isabel and her very young sister Ruth are slaves.  Their mistress dies and the pair are sold to a couple from New York City.  The wife, Mrs Lockton, is a cruel mistress.  The scene where they are taken from Newport is heart wrenching. Isabel must leave her dead mother behind knowing she cannot follow :

"Momma said that ghosts couldn't move over water.  That's why kidnapped Africans got trapped in the Americas. ... All of Momma's people had been stolen too, and taken to Jamaica where she was born. Then she got sold to Rhode Island, and the ghosts of her parents couldn't follow and protect her"

You can listen to a little of the first chapter here.  You can read more details of the plot here.  The author web site has excellent teaching notes.

Isabel is made to work so hard in the Lockton house but she makes one very important friend.  A young boy named Curzon.  He never gives up on Isabel and when events conspire against him, Isabel shows her own deep loyalty.  Both have been lied to and double crossed but they will find freedom.

Here is a scene where Isabel has been sent to fetch water.

"The cut on my left hand pained me too much to use it, and my right hand was not big enough, I journeyed in a crow-hop fashion - carrying one bucket for twenty strides, setting it down, then returning to fetch the second bucket and carrying it forward to meet its partner.  ... Curzon joined me. He would not look at me.  Didn't say a word, neither. He simply carried the buckets to the Locktons' gate for me, then walked away."

Chains is at times quite a violent book and so I would recommend it for experienced readers aged 11+ and all adults.  There is a harrowing scene where Isabel is branded, she is regularly beaten and her visits to the prison are filled with threats and horror.  On the other hand it is clear so much research has gone into this carefully crafted book. I loved all the little domestic details such as the opulent dinner given when the British arrive.

"The cook had prepared enough to feed a battalion : pheasant stuffed with figs, stewed oysters, potted larks, greens cooked with bacon, pickled watermelon rind, and buttered parsnips."

"... the dessert tray - rice pudding, lemon biscuits, two creamed pear tarts, and an iced cake"

Here is a review from the School library Journal - well worth reading.  Click the links at the bottom of this post to read two more reviews.

Chains disproves the notion that a children’s book written for the middle reader set can’t have complexity and interesting characters. Best of all, it’s a great read.

This is a lovely novel - about big issues and big stories, but never losing its focus on individual people. Isabel is a captivating central character, treated abominably and reaching depths of sadness today's children are unlikely to ever experience, but she never loses her spirit. She's enslaved in every possible way, but never stops being her own impulsive and sometimes hot-tempered self, and somehow ... she manages acts of kindness and generosity that are utterly heroic.

... as with all great books, this is more than just a 

well-told story. It’s a wonderfully crafted novel.

The Horribly Haunted School by Margaret Mahy illustrated by Robert Staermose

I am a huge fan of Margaret Mahy and she doesn't disappoint with this junior novel.  Brilliant language, a laugh aloud plot, perfectly shaped storytelling and a very satisfying conclusion.

Monty Merryandrew is a conventional boy, well sort of, but he has very unconventional parents.  His mother is a champion jigsaw contestant and his father works as a government philosopher at the Department of National Despair.  In their backyard is an old car inhabited by a ghost called Lulu.   I love the way Margaret Mahy leads the reader into the realisation that Lulu is a ghost.  Listen to this scene.

"I'm never hungry"
"I miss the idea of breakfast"
"I loved eating when I was alive"
"It's so boring haunting a car that's never going to be driven ever again."

His mother does not believe in ghosts and she is sure sending Monty to a new, more sensible school, will cure him of this idea.  That very day Monty arrives at the Brinsley Codd School for Sensible Thought.  As he enters the office of the school principal - Ms Margiold Principal, he begins to sneeze. This is a sure sign there are ghosts in this school but of course no one believes him.

After a disastrous morning with his new and awful teacher, the aptly named Mr Sogbucket, Monty finally meets the ghost.  It is none other than school founder Brinsley Codd.  Brinsley sets a task for Monty.  He wants to know the fate of three precious school students.  Scrunley Filcher, Avery Crispins and Jessica Frogcutlet.  These naughty children were sent to him to be punished but instead "I would talk to the naughty children in a sympathetic but sensible way, and then I would ... tell them to pretend to cry, so everyone would think they had been punished for their misdeeds."

Here is a Kirkus quote :

Along with a crisp pace, an abundance of silly words and silly names, and a cast of children who save the day by showing more sense than the adults can muster,

Here are some of the wonderful words :

squidlets, sausosnack and nipkin - these are foods
Prang Street, Impact Drive and Bowled-over-backwards Boulevard - street names near Monty's home
Triumph Podmore and Neroli-Pompas - vintage cars
gillygaloo
gongoozler
gallynipper
gyasctus
Firkins of Jigjag Fizz "a wholesome drink much loved by jigsaw puzzle champions"


I was pleased to see the word horrakapotchkin.  Margaret Mahy uses this delicious word in her book The Three Legged cat.

Here is an alternate cover for a newer edition of The Horribly Haunted School but (yes you have guess this) of course this marvelous book is out of print!