A boy's awful action followed by a painful road to some level of redemption, interspersed with the sometimes harrowing stories of the elderly people the boy cares for while performing mandated community service. Clear, distinct voices of each character, stories that resonate with authenticity and heart. Beautifully wrought.

This was a lovely book. Author Gayle Forman presses absolutely all the available buttons but she does it so well we're okay with it. Although it is narrated by one hundred and seven year old Holocaust survivor, our protagonist is actually Alex, a troubled, angry twelve year old boy. By the grace of a caring social worker, he is sent to a retirement home for mandatory "volunteer" time, and he is not happy about it. He is frightened about his future. I don't think it's a spoiler to say he's on borrowed time before an judge hands down a decision on his future because he has committed an act of violence towards another student in his school. He had started a new school yet again, his mother, who constantly moved them, has been taken away for mental evaluation while he stays with an aunt and uncle that obviously don't want him. Alex knows nothing of the Holocaust, not even the word itself. Through the stories of the narrator, and some of the other residents, Alex is able to learn about confronting his life choices and what it means to "rise to the occasion." These are not easy concepts to embrace at any age, and when you can, it certainly is "not nothing"

Rise to the occasion. This story starts with this and ends with this, though Not Nothing is the perfect title. Because no one is nothing and everyone is something.
Josey is 107 years old and is narrating this book. He narrates his own story as well as Alex's. Josey's story is one from the Holocaust and his love for Olka. Alex is given community service at Shady Glen - a retirement home- pending his hearing for a crime he commited. The crime is not revealed until the end of the story because readers need to get to know Alex before they learn of his crime. It's imperative.
Alex meets Maya-Jade, another volunteer at the Shady Glen, and hates her immediately. But Alex has learned that hate is what keeps him going. He is living iwth his aunt and uncle who consider him a burden after a few foster homes.
Alex is bitter about his time at Shady Glen, but after just a week he starts to realize he likes it there- better than being at home with his aunt and uncle. Slowly, over time, he gets to know the residents and they get to know him. Alex learns to rise to the occasion but only after his terrible secret is revealed.

Josey is a 107 year old Holocaust survivor from Poland. Alex is a 12 year old boy, hey couldn’t possibly have anything in common could they? Think again! Alex has not had the best of luck in life and after doing a bad thing (no spoilers) gets sent to volunteer at a retirement facility where he meets our narrator Josey, he also meets Maya-Jade (don’t forget to ennunce the hyphen) and a cast of other characters who I grew to love. Alex is the first person Joset has spoken a word aloud to in five years and sees some of his wife Olka in Alex and knows he can help Alex by telling their (Josey and Olkas) story. This is a story about love, loss, grief, and redemption. I could not put it down.

There are moments when this book shines, mainly in the beginning, but it begins to go off the rails when this author decides to make this book about every social issue known to man. My head started to spin after awhile and I found myself checking every other page to see how long until I’d be out of my misery.

Starts off as a sweet book about a kid who’s had a rough go in his 12 years of life and is given a chance for redemption as a nursing home volunteer. Growing up with a mentally unstable mom, changing schools twice every year, finally getting stuck with an aunt and uncle who could care less about him, makes for a kid with fairly poor mental health himself. He doesn’t think he’s worth much. He’s guarded. Doesn’t trust easily. In every situation he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then an unexpected thing happens. A resident who hasn’t spoken in a long time, opens up to Alex on their first meeting. Over the course of the following weeks, he tells Alex all about his first love and facing death as a Jew in WW2 Poland.

Toward the end, we find out why Alex was assigned to court ordered community service. We also realize that he’s a changed boy as a result of his interactions with the residents, fellow volunteer Maya-Jade, facility workers, and social worker. It’s meant to be a feel good story, but falls flat for me. These changes and realizations were like a pretty package disguising a disappointing gift inside. It’s all too neat. Too much happening. There’s the nursing home story, the Holocaust story and a smattering of characters to cover race, religion, sexuality and gender issues. The social worker admitting he’s trans, out of the blue, at the end, as a one sentence gotcha, is almost laughable in its poor execution.

Unfortunately, there’s more weirdness. Elderly resident, Josef, uses the 2nd person voice (aka ‘you’), but he’s not talking to the reader. He’s talking to his beloved deceased wife. It feels off. Very little worked for me in this book. The moral came through loud and clear, which is to rise to the occasion of your life. Excellent theme for a kid’s book. But as I mentioned, the beginning duped me into thinking this was going to be a fantastic book and it wasn’t. Hence, 2 stars.

I recieved a free eARC of this book. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.

When a kid feels like nothing....it's easy to do the wrong thing.

Not Nothing is a tale of redemption, but even more, it's a tale of failure. Alex is redeemed, grows a bit, and becomes a better person over the course of a summer spent volunteering at a retirement home, with the support of 107 yr old Josey, a Holocaust survivor, his social worker, Frank, Maya-Jade, another young volunteer, and the staff. But even more, the book doesn't shy away from showing how Alex became a person who felt like he was nothing, who had been treated as unwanted, thrown away, and pushed aside to the point that a thrown out comment from a popular kid was enough to push him over the edge. And more than anything else, it was a similarly ignored, forgotten senior citizen who was able to connect with him as a person and make him feel wanted and needed. Alex is a perpetrator. He has committed a hate crime, something truly horrible. He's also a victim.

This is a beautiful book. And a hard to read book. Any book with a backdrop of the Holocaust is going to be hard to read. Any book which connects the hate, the dehumanization and the results of the Holocaust to current events is going to be. But that's why it's needed. That's why it's valuable.


It is likely that many schools won't be allowed to teach or shelve this book. Because it's going to make some people feel bad. Because it's going to make kids think. Because while bad things are clear, it's a lot harder to draw the line between victims and perpetrators than one might think. And far easier for people to cross the line. This is a well written, compelling book that pulls you in and keeps you there. It makes you think. It deserves a chance.

I mostly enjoyed this novel about a boy dealing with trauma. Alex is living with his aunt and uncle after a series of horrifying events and is spending the summer volunteering at a retirement community. His story unfolds from the POV of a 107-year-old resident of the nursing home, who also shares his story of the Holocaust. There is a lot going on here and I was deeply invested in Alex and his story. At times, the perspective was confusing and I found it odd that 12 year old Alex had never heard of the Holocaust. Overall, this book had me tearing up but I'm not sure how it will land with students. There is lots of representation here too.

When Alex is charged with a hate crime, the judge forces him to volunteer at Shady Glen retirement home where he meets Maya-Jade, another volunteer his age. As he helps out, one day he meets Josey who’s 107 and hasn’t spoke to anyone in years. The two begin talking and Josey tells Alex about his life during the Holocaust. In time Alex finds he likes helping at the home, and when Maya-Jade invites him to her house he feels like he’s part of a family even though he knows it will end. When something happens to make Maya-Jade get mad at him and he’s told he can’t come back to the retirement home, Alex wonders how can he make things better. What does he do?

This is such a beautiful book. Alex has a lot of struggles and past traumas that he is trying to deal with. When he is sentenced to "volunteer" a Shady Glen assisted living, he is not looking forward to it. But he really learns to love and care for the residents and finally finds a place where he feels loved and cared for. Which he has struggled to find in the past. He didn't have consistency with his mom and has been moved around a lot.
When we find out what the incident was that landed him here I was so heartbroken for him. Yes he has some pent up anger, but he really just wanted to find a place where he was wanted and made to feel "not nothing".
He is really able to find that with Josey and Julio and Maya-Jade. This book had me tearing up as I felt for Alex as he has new feelings of love and caring from these people around him. He describes it as feeling all warm inside or like how you feel the sun on your face and that is really what it feels like when you find a place where others care about you. (Those were not the exact words that Forman uses, she does a really great job of those descriptions, but I didn't mark it in my kindle book, so it would take me a bit to go back and find it.)
I also really loved Josey's story. I was not expecting to have the Holocaust weaved into this book, but that story really touched me too. I am Jewish and I love seeing this history and helping elementary and middle graders learn more about it, so that things like that hopefully never happen again.
This is just a really really beautiful book. I think that older elementary and middle graders can really take away the life lessons from this book.

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

We absolutely need more of this inter-generational relationship in middle grade literature. That being said, I think this particular story would be better understood by readers 9th or 10th grade and above.
I can’t put this one on my shelves, but I did enjoy reading it.

Not Nothing is a terrific book that I truly enjoyed reading, and that I highly recommend. Not only is it a fun read for kids and many adults alike, it's also a story filled with many life lessons. Lessons that children will absorb with ease without ever realizing that they're actually learning something of such great value. Having been around children for many years as not only a teacher but as a parent and grandparent as well, I can tell you that I honestly believe that this type of learning can often help shape a child for life. So with that being said I'm giving this wonderful story 4 and a half stars and I hope you find as much pleasure in reading it as I did.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing for providing me with this ARC

This beautifully written book sucked me in from the first page and kept me engrossed through the end. Forced to spend a summer volunteering at a senior living facility as a last chance to avoid juvenile detention, 12-year-old Alex finds himself forging unexpected bonds with Josey, a 107-year-old Holocaust survivor who hadn't spoken in five years, and Maya-Jade, the outspoken granddaughter of another resident. As Alex listens to Josey's story, slowly starts to feel like part of the facility's community, and tentatively forms a friendship with Maya-Jade, he must decide if he wants to--or even can-- change his trajectory. Will he always be defined by his worst actions, or will he (will any of us?) rise to the occasion of his life? Fans of the author's middle-grade book Frankie & Bug will enjoy cameos from that book's main characters, now adults.