Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Gayle Forman!
Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!
Meet the Author: Gayle Forman
Award-winning author and journalist Gayle Forman (she/her/hers) has written several bestselling novels, including those in the Just One Day series, Where She Went, and the #1 New York Times bestseller If I Stay, which has been translated into more than forty languages and was adapted into a major motion picture. Her first middle grade novel, Frankie & Bug, was a New York Times Best Children’s Book of 2021. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
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About the Book: Not Nothing
“The book we all need at the time we all need it.” —Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award–winning author of The One and Only Ivan
In this middle grade novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman, a boy who has been assigned to spend his summer volunteering at a senior living facility learns unexpected lessons that change the trajectory of his life.
To say Alex has had it rough is an understatement. His father’s gone, his mother is struggling with mental health issues, and he’s now living with an aunt and uncle who are less than excited to have him. Almost everyone treats him as though he doesn’t matter at all, like he’s nothing.
So when a kid at school actually tells him he’s nothing, Alex snaps, and gets violent. Fortunately, his social worker pulls some strings and gets him a job at a nursing home for the summer rather than being sent to juvie. There, he meets Josey, the 107-year-old Holocaust survivor who stopped bothering to talk years ago, and Maya-Jade, the granddaughter of one of the residents with an overblown sense of importance.
Unlike Alex, Maya-Jade believes that people care about what she thinks, and that she can make a difference. And when Alex and Josey form an unlikely bond, with Josey confiding in him, Alex starts to believe he can make a difference—a good difference—in the world. If he can truly feel he matters, Alex may be able to finally rise to the occasion of his own life.
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write Not Nothing?
In the author’s note of the book, I wrote that the book took me seven years to write, and also 53, because it’s such a collision of so many inspirations and deeply personal themes. It begins with my maternal grandparents, who fled Nazi Germany in 1938, and encompasses the years I spent in my twenties visiting a delightful older woman at an assisted living facility, to more recent experiences visiting my sister who was working as a nurse at a different assisted-living facility. I think what ignited it all was witnessing a resurgence of hate groups, and wondering what brings a person to hate, and what brings them away from hate (short answer: love).
YABC: Who is your favorite character in Not Nothing?
Without question, it’s Josey. He’s the character who was such fun to write, a character whose company I could spend hours in. He feels real to me, like someone I truly love.
YABC: What research did you do to write Not Nothing?
I had to do research for both timelines. For the present-day one, I visited the assisted-living facility my sister worked at and talked to many of the residents. There was a flu outbreak when I was there and a quarantine—this was pre-Covid so quarantines were novel—which made it into the book, and the characters of Josey and Minna were inspired by one of the residents I met there. The research I did about hate groups, which wound up not having a direct impact on the storyline, helped me understand Alex more deeply. Having a sister who is a nurse working with a geriatric population was super helpful.
For the 1930s/40s timeline, the United States Holocaust Museum was incredibly helpful, both online archives and the librarians and archivist on site. The most challenging thing to research was what life would’ve been like for assimilated Jews in Krakow, Poland before the war. A lot has been written about Germany or even Warsaw but I wanted to set the book in Krakow, a city I visited in the 1990s and fell in love with. I managed to find a lot of first-hand accounts, often self-published, from Polish Jews and from the owner of the Eagle Pharmacy, a real pharmacy from the Krakow ghetto that plays a pivotal role in the book. I include a bibliography in the book.
YABC: How do you keep your ‘voice’ true to the age category you are writing within?
Once I know a character, the voice comes easily to me and Josey’s voice was instantly accessible. But Not Nothing is primarily about a 12-year-old boy—and it needed to sound like a 12-year old boy—but the boy’s story is narrated by a 107-year-old man. So it took a fair amount of effort to thread that needle so it sounds like Alex’s voice but leave room for Josey’s commentary throughout.
YABC: Which character gave you the most trouble when writing Not Nothing?
Alex. Not that he was hard to write in and of himself. I knew Alex before I started writing him, knew he’d done a bad thing and why and had enormous compassion for him. But writing him in a way that allowed readers to see him not at his best in the beginning and still follow him, maybe even root for him, so that by the time Alex’s bad thing is revealed, any revulsion they might have for Alex is balanced by (and complicated by) compassion. That was a highwire act.
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from Not Nothing?
At its core, Not Nothing is about rising to the occasion of your own life. Both Josey’s and Alex’s stories illustrate what happens when you are—or are not—given the chance to do this. And in both cases, we see characters who initially don’t behave as their best selves being treated with grace and offered the opportunity to rise to the occasion. None of us are not born perfect, all of us make mistakes, but we have the capacity for growth and change, if given the—and apologies to the main character Alex who hates this word—opportunity.
YABC: What can readers expect to find in your books?
All.The.Feels. Including humor. Not Nothing deals with some weighty themes but it’s also funny!
YABC: What word do you have trouble overusing?
Funny you should ask because I notice I have a crutch word that is distinct to each book and once I recognize it, I go on a major prune. For Not Nothing, I had to stop myself from overusing Josey’s oofs. But they were just so fun to write and imagine.
YABC: What do you do when you procrastinate?
Walk the dog in the park with my husband, cook, read, do yoga, garden, hang out with my kids and my friends.I guess just live my life. It’s not really procrastinating. One of the benefits of having done this a while is that I don’t push it when a book’s not ready. I started Not Nothing in 2017; it’s coming out in 2024. I had to put it away and work on other things until I figured out where it needed to be.
Title: Not Nothing
Author: Gayle Forman
ISBN-13: 9781665943277
ISBN-10: 1665943270
On-sale date: Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Imprint: Aladdin
Ages: 10 and up; Grades 5 and up
~ Giveaway Details ~
Three (3) winners will receive a copy of Not Nothing (Gayle Forman) ~US Only (No P.O. Boxes)!
*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*
