Not Nothing: Rising to the Occasion of Our Lives, a Conversation with Bestselling Author Gayle Forman

It's Not Nothing to have written a book that grabs you on the very first page and makes you not want to put it down. It's Not Nothing to have written a book where you've got this gorgeous intergenerational relationship that makes you laugh and makes you cry. It's Not Nothing to have written a book that is unafraid to tackle some of the most critical issues of today. It's Not Nothing to have written that book for middle graders. And it's Not Nothing to have the most inspiring and thoughtful conversation with best-selling author Gayle Forman, on this week's episode of the Adventures in Learning podcast.

Episode Summary:
Join us for an inspiring conversation with best-selling author Gayle Forman about her latest book, Not Nothing. Discover the transformative story of 12-year-old Alex and 107-year-old Holocaust survivor Josey, whose bond changes both their lives. Gayle shares her personal and historical inspirations, the delicate balance of humor and serious themes for young readers, and the significance of intergenerational storytelling.

Key Points:

• (0:00 - 04:34): Introduction to Not Nothing. Meet Alex, Josey, Olka, and Maya-Jade, and explore their poignant connections.
• (04:34 - 16:18) Intergenerational Storytelling and Bridge Building. How do you connect the Holocaust to issues faced by children today? We explore the power of humor blended with historical narratives to create genuine connections. Plus, Gayle shares practical tools like Generational Vocabulary Guides and Interview Questions for meaningful conversations. There are also many insightful educator resources for Not Nothing on her website.
• (16:18 - 20:32): Finding Hope in Rising to the Occasion of Our Lives. We talk about resilience and growth, as well as the importance of stepping out of our comfort zones and facing life's challenges with grace and generosity. 
• (20:32 - 22:32): Empowering the Next Generation: We reflect on the resilience and inspiration of today's young people and the importance of modeling strength and supporting their growth.

Resources and Links:

• Pre-order Not Nothing by Gayle Forman
• Gayle Forman’s Website
• Not Nothing Educator Resources
• Generational Vocabulary Guides and Interview Questions
• Are You Ready to Rise to the Occasion? Operation Rise resources
• Adventures in Learning Podcast Website

Transcript

00:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's not nothing to have written a book that grabs you on the very first page and makes you not want to put it down. It's not nothing to have written a book where you've got this gorgeous intergenerational relationship that makes you laugh and makes you cry. It's not nothing to have written a book that is unafraid to tackle some of the most critical issues of today. It's not nothing to have written that book for middle graders. And it's not nothing to be best-selling author Gayle Forman, who is here with us today on the Adventures in Learning podcast. Gayle, welcome to the show.

00:37 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
Thank you. That was like the best intro ever, so I'm so thrilled to be here, Diane. I love this book.

00:43 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I have to tell you, when I got my advanced reader copy, I started reading it and I didn't put it down and I was so sad as I got to the last couple, just a little bit more. It is so powerful. Can you tell us a little bit about Not Nothing and what inspired you to write this?

01:12 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
Yes, of course. First of all, just thank you so much. I relish that as a reader, when you just can't wait to be in a book but don't want to give it up. So I'm so glad that I could deliver that.

01:22
Not Nothing is the story of a 12-year-old boy named Alex who has done something very, very wrong, and I'm not going to tell you what it is. You have to read to find out. And as a result of that, while he's awaiting a court hearing, a sympathetic social worker arranges for him to volunteer at an assisted living facility of older people, and Alex very much does not want to be there. He's angry about everything. He hates everybody he meets there, including Maya Jade, another tween do-gooder who's volunteering for the summer. But then one day he winds up in the room of a 107 year old Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor named Josey, who is just there waiting to die. He he has not spoken in five years and for reasons neither of them understand. Initially, Josey begins telling Alex the story of a young woman named Olka, who Josie knew in 1930s Poland, and Olka sort of starts out as angry and as resentful as Alex is, but by Josey sort of inviting her to rise to the occasion of her life, Olka begins to change, she and Josey fall in love, and she winds up saving his life. And in telling the story to Alex, Josey sort of changes both of their lives and I guess that's a great summary. That's a great summary and the inspiration, I'm afraid, is going to be just, you know, a little bit elaborate too because it was so many different inspirations.

02:45
So, like my family story, I'm the granddaughter of German Jews who fled Nazi Germany, so that story is always in my mind. Like what did it feel like to sort of be in that pot, as the hot water was getting hotter and hotter? So that was part of it. I used to volunteer at an assisted living facility and visited this one woman named Oli who I adored and I loved meeting the other people there and they all had these incredible stories to tell.

03:12
On the sort of the darker side of things, sort of there was, you know, this sudden huge spike in sort of hate groups being very out and out there and I wondered about like what is it that makes people sort of turn to that kind of hate and what is it that makes people come back from that? And so I started doing some reading about that, I came across sort of a story about this sort of star-crossed Polish couple that had this daring escape from Auschwitz. And then, finally, I was visiting my sister who used to work at an assisted living facility in Seattle, and there I met Sam, who is a 98-year-old Austrian Jewish gentleman who sort of was the spark for Josie, and so all of those threads came together, the idea was born, and then it just took me seven years to write it, because it was a tough book to write.

04:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It is a tough book to write and I think for me what was really magical is this is a middle grade book. This is written for those sort of 10, 11, 12 year olds who are a tough audience, but you managed to find a way to write it where it's powerful but it's not heavy. In places you know it's digestible. You took something like the Holocaust and made it something that they could enter into, because you're entering through somebody's story, but you made it real.

04:30 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
Thank you for that. And you mentioned the humor, which I'm really glad there's. There's so much humor in the book and yes, I mean it's. It has a Holocaust story to it, but it's also grounded in the now, because history, I think sometimes can seem so very far away in the now, because history, I think sometimes can seem so very far away.

04:48
And so Alex being able to talk to Josey, history is real and he's seeing how, even though the times were quite different, he's seeing parallels within his own life, because I think we tend to think of history as like this thing, that's sort of shrouded in hard white marble and it's not. People were people were people were people. So I think, allowing Josey to be the storyteller and that was the hard thing of it I knew that I wanted this 107-year-old man to be the narrator of a book for kids and so trying to figure out how Josey would channel Alex and sound like a kid but be able to have his own voice is what sort of made it tricky. But it was the story I knew I had to tell and how this book had to be.

05:26 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I love the relationship between Alex and Maya Jade as well, because, yes, she comes across as a do-gooder but she's got her own secrets that are buried deep and she's got her own hurts that she's grappling with, and I think that they bring good stuff out of each other. And I loved the idea that they wind up teaming up to find the stories of the people in the nursing home and the assisted living facility. And that got me thinking about the power of story and the power of connection, because I think we live in times where we're so disconnected from each other that it made me start thinking about what would happen if we started just asking people about their stories. What would we learn?

06:09 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
I'm so glad you mentioned that For one. Alex and Maya Jade, when they meet each other they get off to a not great start, in part because they immediately make these snap judgments that assumes the worst about the other. And I think we are in a place where we have a tendency to do that, to just assume that the least generous interpretation and of course everybody's got so much going on in their own inner life and once they start to connect and really understand that it really opens up their relationship. And yes, I love the idea of the intergenerational bonding and all of that connection. And we've actually created a ton of sort of assets for educators and community members to use, including this really fun I'll send. It is the Guide to Understanding your Olds and the flip side is the Guide to Understanding your Youngs. And it starts out with like really funny vocab words that the youth use that we don't get, and as soon as I put an asterisk, I'm like as soon as you read these words, they're out of date, because that's how it works.

07:16 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love it, it's true.

07:17 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
And then the flip side, like things that my kids don't understand, like you know, like what is a voicemail? They have them on their phones and AOL and all the things and so. But as you get deeper into the, into the pamphlet, it's actually open-ended interview questions that young people can ask older people and older people can ask younger people. So they can get beyond the like what do you like in school question, and what was life like when you were younger, and sort of. I'm hoping break down those barriers so they can really start to connect on a level where they see each other as sort of peers, even though there might be generations separating them, who had the same desires, had the same fears, had the same worries.

07:54
I think young people, particularly at this age, when they're starting to pull further away from their parents and more into their peer groups and into their technology, it would be really incredibly helpful and healthy for them to have these older individuals as like anchor adults in their lives who are not their mom and dad, and if they can be grandparents or older relatives, fantastic. But there's just also such a possibility in the communities, at those assisted living facilities, with these people who have, like this wealth of wisdom, and I'm not saying that like every old person is like wise. That's kind of like a cliche. But by dint of having been alive all this time, you have a unique perspective of the world that I think is incredibly helpful for those of us who have maybe been here less time and can't necessarily see it with that broad scope.

08:41 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I totally agree. I just did a trip with my father and he's 82. And it was fascinating for me because I was I told my kids later I'm like I think I was the youngest person on the cruise, minus the guides sitting and asking and drawing out questions and things broke down Like I mean things that I was assuming I was like I made some bad assumptions and by giving grace, I discovered there was so much richness to these humans that were surrounding me and I feel like I'm blessed for having spent that time in their presence.

09:18 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
Yeah, I'm seriously jealous of this experience. That sounds incredible, and it's also true to like give them time and space, because I think a lot of times I've noticed that people don't remember things I don't remember. And then you get people talking and then suddenly that's sort of how memory works it unlocks a closet and then all of a sudden things come tumbling out. And you mentioned my favorite word in the world right now, which is grace. I think if I had to think of like one word to describe this book and what I hope people take from it, it's grace, it's that we treat each other and ourselves with more grace.

09:55 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I don't want to spoil the ending and I'm not going to spoil the ending because you absolutely have to read it, but grace comes through so strongly throughout the book, and particularly with the ending, in terms of being able to create space for each other, and you definitely hit that one. No problem. Good, I'm glad to hear it. So how challenging was it, because you do take on some pretty weighty issues within this book. How challenging was it to sort of move from writing for adults and young adults to writing for this grade level and being able to say the truths that you wanted to say, but to do it in a way that it would be digestible?

10:37 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
You know this was my second middle grade. I wrote, I had a middle grade that came out during the pandemic called Frankie and Bug, and so I think that was like my. It didn't occur to me until after the fact and people would read it. They'd be like, oh she's, she's dealing with heavy stuff.

10:52
I've always written for young people and about young people. I worked as a journalist at 17 magazine for years and we wrote the kind of stories that nobody would believe we were doing. When I would tell people, yeah, I went to Sierra Leone to cover the Civil War there because they're using child soldiers, People were like, what Kids care about? This they do. They especially care about things that are happening to other young people because, even if it is completely disconnected from their own experience, there are emotional things that they understand, because adults have so much agency over you when you're a kid and so the stakes don't have to be that high. So it never occurred to me that I had to like dumb it down or I just.

11:33
I think that I've always sort of tended, naturally, toward writing for young people, and so when I wrote Frankie and Bug, of course it's like, how do you make the material appropriate, but I never really sort of thought like, oh, I have to like dumb this down or sugarcoat this, because I think kids are aware of what is going on and I I respect my reader enough to know that they will take in what they're able to take in and that other things they may not be able to sort of get to and maybe might read it a few years later and see things that they haven't seen.

12:07
So it doesn't just, it doesn't occur to me that they're not going to be, it's just really more about finding the authentic voice of the character.

12:16
And so once I did that, once I discovered Bug's voice in Frankie, and Bug like it brings in the humor, it brings in how kids see things and it just felt sort of natural. And so I think you're able to kind of take on things that are going in the world and not shelter the kids, because they're not sheltered from it Anyhow, they just are not it. So they know it's going on, and so I would rather allow them to engage in a way that is appropriate for them to engage with, with adults, you know, with the teachers and educators and parents or grandparents in their life to kind of have a conversation with. So that's never really the challenge. You know, the challenge, like I said with Frank and Bug, was finding the voice, and the challenge with this one, as I mentioned earlier, was how do I have this 107-year-old man narrate in his voice, but also have it be true to Alex's voice and Alex's experience?

13:06 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And yeah, I totally agree. And you know I was thinking about Kate DiCamillo once said that you write, you know children experience the dark places and so you write for them and you write about the things that are true. And you know you noticed your book behind me on the shelf. It's with some other authors who very much capture that. You know folks like Jerry Craft, Kate, Katherine Applegate, people who really get how to write for that age group and you do it very naturally and I think that's a gift. It may not be a gift that you realize you have, because not everybody can do that so well, but you definitely hit it and I think it's going to really resonate with this audience sell very well because children want to read those stories.

13:54 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
They do not want to be protected from them. They want to be able to explore what they see around them in a way that feels safe and appropriate for them.

14:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And that's key. There's a lot of stuff in terms of book banning and people challenging books, and I think what we miss when we default to that place is that kids are going to hear about it anyway. They've got these. They live in a world that in many ways, we're so concerned about supervising their outdoor play. We forget about the indoor play and what they've got access to via their phones. And you're absolutely right. Why not give them a safe avenue to be able to explore and discuss and talk about the world and do it in a way where they can be compassionate and graceful with one another?

14:43 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
It's so important. I've been reading a lot of Jonathan Haidt I know like the Anxious Generation is like the number one book on the bestseller list right now, but I've been sort of tearing through everything of his and actually we're doing young people a noted disservice when we don't allow them to take the appropriate risks that will allow them to develop some resilience so that they can go into young adulthood and adulthood capable of dealing with things. We are doing nobody any favors by protecting them. And as far as the book bans go, I think there's some that are just very politically motivated and sort of nefarious.

15:16
But I also understand there's almost a magical thinking among parents that if I don't expose my children to these things it won't happen to them, and if I do, it will. And neither one of those are true. The best we can do is arm our young people with a sense of resilience so that when the difficult things in life happen because they will, because it's life they have some of the ability to understand, they can deal with it. They can sorry to say this they can rise to the occasion. But we want to give young people opportunities to rise to the occasion over and over and over so they develop that confidence in themselves that they can do it.

15:52 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And as the stakes change, they'll be able to rise and you talk about that concept of rise to the occasion of your life. How has that manifested for you? I know you and I have both recently celebrated some milestone birthdays and we're entering a new phase. How is it different in the fifties versus how it looked when you were in your twenties?

16:13 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
I just think that it's more and more of the confidence. I traveled a lot when I was younger. I traveled by myself after I graduated high school, from like 18 to 21. And I think travel was so key because it constantly pushes you out of your comfort zone and when you do that, your comfort zone grows, your resilience grows, and so travel is one way to do that.

16:36
But I think there's lots of ways to push yourself out of your comfort zone and sometimes, like reading things that make you uncomfortable at first, like that's actually a good thing. I think we've, we've we've turned discomfort into a bad thing, but it's like it's the beginning of growth, right, growth always hurts. I remember when my kids had growing pains, when they were actually literally growing, and the doctor's, like imagine your bones growing, like there's a process to it. So I think that that is hugely important. And now, like rising to the occasion for me it's whenever I can face any situation in life with more generosity, and that can be whether I'm talking about, like donating more money to a cause, but also generosity, generosity of spirit and time and energy. That is when I feel like I'm rising to the occasion, and you know it's hard to define what rising to the occasion means, because it's so deeply personal, angels of our spirit. I think about.

17:32
Jonathan Haney talks about godliness, even though he's an atheist. It's just an idea of like when you connect with the better side of yourself and you know it when you get there, because it feels incredible. You feel part of something bigger than yourself. You feel part of something good. You're not focused on the things you don't have, or even the things you do have, you're just very in the moment, and so, anyway, we can encourage young people not so young people to get there. It's great, and I don't know about you, but 54, the more I feel like I'm not Josey's age yet, but I do have the benefit of some wisdom. I think you probably have the benefit of some wisdom, and that sure helps.

18:05 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It really does, and I think if I could challenge our listeners today to do anything, it's to sort of spend some time thinking about what rising to the occasion of your life means for you, because it really is liberating and it ultimately leads to compassion and grace as well 100%, and we also have things for teachers.

18:28 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
I think it'll be on my website, but we would love for young people to think about that. We have talked about it in class. We have a big poster with. You can get these little sticky notes and it's today. I will rise to the occasion by and you can. You can write down what you want to do and how you're going to rise, and it can be the smallest thing. It is not just like doing a good deed, it can just be a challenge you've laid for yourself and you don't have to sign your name to it, and it can change daily.

19:05 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So that's another sort of resource where we're hoping that educators who might be using this in a classroom setting will be able to use to kind of have a civics and, dare I say, spiritual education alongside a reading and history education and the family members with. When you think about this book is that you're connecting to character traits, which I know so many schools focus on sort of different character traits your social, emotional learning. It's the civics piece. There's even sort of the problem learning you can actually create projects or project-based learning. And then you've got the history and then you've got all the ways you could connect to different voices and how you tell a story using different perspectives. So this book has everything for you besides being a really good read. So, Gayle, last question for today what brings you hope?

19:52 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
Oh, it's such a cliche to say this. I feel like every children's book author says this, but it's because it's true. Young people give me hope. They really do. I see a level of compassion, a level of activism, a level of and they have, they have truly been through so much.

20:15
This pandemic was was not nothing, and I see them sort of coming out the other side of it and I see the way they they connect with other people, especially when they are given the opportunity to do it in the real world and not just in the virtual world. And I'm always blown away. It started when I was at 17 magazine. I was just. Every time I met young people, every time our readers wrote in, every time I go to a school, every time I go to a festival and connect with readers, then I just I'm like okay, okay.

20:47
And I hate that because we're leaving them quite a few challenges to deal with and it doesn't seem fair to say, hey, here you go and I'm here to do all the work I can for every single day I'm on this earth. But I do feel like, as bleak as sometimes things can look or be portrayed, you go out and you actually talk to young people and you're like, okay, they really really do get things on such a deeper level than we Gen Xers did when we were kids, and I think that they will be sort of starting from a level of sort of sophistication and thoughtfulness, and I think if we can bring in that resilience and that grace, they're unstoppable.

21:27 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I think if we can rise to the occasions of our own lives, then we can support them in undoing some of the mess that we've left them.

21:35 - Gayle Forman (Guest)
Absolutely Model for them and then give them the model and then support them 100%, and that's exactly what you're doing with your work. So I really want to thank you.

21:45 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, thank you, and so,are you, Gayle. This has been a fabulous conversation. Folks, Not Nothing is available for pre-order right now. Go get it from your local independent bookstore, get it from bookshoporg. It's an amazing book and you're not going to regret it. Gayle, thank you for joining us today on the podcast. Thank you for having me.