Gotham Writers Blog

Children’s picture books merge prose, poetry, and art into kind of magical paper movie starring whoever wants to be the performer. They serve as gateways to sleep but can be enchanting any time of day.

If you’re interested in writing a picture book…

Gotham is offering a brand-new Picture Book Intensive, in two three-hour Zoom sessions, Saturdays August 9 and 16. If that timing doesn’t work for you or it fills up, just put yourself on the wait list and you’ll be notified when it’s offered again. And you can also work on picture books (as well as other kind of children’s books) in our Children’s Book Writing courses.

A few of my favorite picture books:

Hello Lighthouse (written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall) – We live alongside the keeper of a lighthouse, watching him tend the house and light. Time passes, seasons change, people are rescued, and the keeper finds a wife who gives birth to a child in the lighthouse. And we experience the mystery of nature and life.

Last Stop on Market Street (written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson) – A boy rides a bus with this grandmother to reach a soup kitchen where they help out. The boy wishes they had a car and he’s not so thrilled where they’re going, but he discovers beauty in the most unlikely places.

Officer Buckle and Gloria (written and illustrated by Peggy Rathmann) – A policeman makes regular visits to talk about safety in schools, but the audience is pretty bored until he starts coming with a police dog. Suddenly, his talks are hit—because the dog is doing all kinds of crazy things behind his back.

These books are fiction, but picture books can also be nonfiction. Somewhat adjacent to pictures books are board books (simple concept books for the youngest kids) and easy readers (with limited vocabulary to ease kids into reading on their own).

Picture books are mostly for ages 3 to 7, but you can keep reading them forever.

It may seem like picture books are easy to write, but that’s far from true. It’s quite the challenge to create one good enough to get published, let alone enrapture kids you’ve never met. That’s why we’re here to help.

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In other exciting news, Gotham is about to kick off its summer season in NYC’s Bryant Park, in their outdoor Reading Room. Every Thursday evening, starting July 10, we’ll be offering free 90-minute classes open to anyone who shows up. And this will be the first time we’ve offered our new Writer’s Mind course there. Check out the schedule to see what’s happening when.

We hope to see some of you there!

Alex Steele

Gotham President

Letters From Kelly

June 17, 2025June 16, 2025

Let Your Darlings Live

There are a few bits of common writing advice that writers, editors, and teachers like me say so frequently and with such certainty, they become canon. They aren’t suggestions so much as they’re laws.

We forget that if writers adhere to them too closely, they can do more harm than good.

I had to re-examine one of them recently after my former student Atash Yaghmaian visited my class to talk about her book My Name Means Fire, coming out from Beacon Press this October.

The aphorism we’re revisiting? “Kill your darlings.”

“Do you ever write something and then you’re like, “Oh, this is shit,” and then you rip it up?” Atash asked. “Please don’t do that.”

“Keep it. Just keep it. Because it’s a part of you who’s expressing yourself. Keep it.”

“Kill your darlings” isn’t exactly wrong—eventually, every writer has to cut chunks out of their stories. If we didn’t, every story would be 5,000 pages long.

The problem is that too many writers start cutting too soon. They delete paragraphs, pages, chapters before they know what their story is about.

In Atash’s case, she didn’t so much kill her darlings as she avoided writing them altogether.

“The first five drafts of this book were about this girl running away from Iran, from war, from the Revolution, and making it to America, and that’s my story, but that’s not my story,” Atash said.

It wasn’t her story, because it left out her internal life. It left out how she survived.

She survived by dissociating into a beautiful inner world, one that she called The House of Stone. It was a beautiful place. It was incredibly creative. And it saved her life.

And she still wrote around it. Through five drafts.

“I was terrified,” Atash said. “Even my [therapist] colleagues would talk about people who [dissociate] as though we are freaks. So, I hid it. When you would read my book, you would just read this happened, then that happened, and it was engaging, sure, because revolution is engaging. But people kept asking, ‘How did you survive?’”

Once Atash wrote the rest of the story, her interior story, not only did her book get better, but her writing changed.

“I let different parts of me come through the pages and say whatever they needed to say without me deleting them,” Atash said. “Writing taught me to be really accepting of all the different voices I have and the different ways I write. Writing was the gateway to understanding myself.”

Now, when Atash sits down to write, she holds nothing back in her first drafts. It’s “purge, purge, purge” into one huge document; later, she’ll open a new one to stitch together a new story, like a quilt.

“First drafts are all foundations,” she said. “Foundations are not pretty. But we build beautiful castles on them, beautiful books, articles, love notes, essays. We need a good strong foundation, so we all get to say what we need to say.”

The saying “Kill your darlings” is really about editing, about being brave enough to check your ego and do what your story needs you to do, to tell a story that’s true.

But you can’t delete your way to a great story. You have to build it.

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty

Letters From Alex

June 4, 2025June 2, 2025

Funny Stuff

Sometimes we just need a laugh. And writers can be especially helpful with that. Here’s two passages I like…

First, the episode of Seinfeld called “The Deal,” written by Larry David. Jerry is good friends with Elaine, of course, but years back they dated for a while. One night they decide they can start having sex with each other so long as they keep it only sex, nothing else, not even sleeping over.

All goes well until Elaine’s birthday comes up. Jerry goes shopping for a present in a second-hand store, taking his buddy George along for help. Jerry hopes to get the right balance—a gift that won’t upset the spirit of the deal. Here they’re sifting through the bric-a-brac:

George: I got it. You wanna get her something nice? How ‘bout a music box?

Jerry: No, too relationshippy. She opens it up, she hears that Lara’s theme, I’m dead.

George: Okay, what about a nice frame? With a picture of another guy in it. Frame says I care for you, but if you wanna get serious, perhaps you’d be interested in someone like this.

Jerry: Nice looking fellow.

George: What about candle holders?

Jerry: Too romantic.

George: Lingerie?

Jerry: Too sexual.

George: Waffle maker.

Jerry: Too domestic.

George: Bust of Nelson Rockefeller.

Jerry: Too gubernatorial.

The situation’s funny because most of us have dealt with relationship precariousness. And it’s topped by that last word—amusing even if you don’t know it means “relating to the office of governor,” which Rockefeller was.

Next, we have Dory Dory Black Sheep, from the Dory Fantasmagory children’s book series, written by Abby Hanlon. It’s reading time in Dory’s first grade-class, and she’s paired with George because, well, neither one of them has come too far reading-wise. Dory considers George a friend, even though he’s on the goofy side. Here’s what happens:

Our teacher comes over. “I think you two are going to love the new series I chose for you. It’s called Happy Little Farm.”

We pretend we are reading until she leaves.

“If I was the farmer, I would just eat all the animals,” whispers George.

“If I was the farmer, I would move to the city and get an apartment with an elevator,” I say.

“If I was the farmer, I would run around naked and put mud all over my body and then stick things to it,” says George.

“But you would do that anyway,” I say.

The writer is a former first-grade teacher, and she knows how to capture these kids in all their very-real hilarity.

Now… go read, watch, or write something funny.