We are so excited to have Jeff Gottesfeld join us today to share information about Picture Books for Older Readers!
Jeff writes for page, stage, screen, and television. He has won awards in America and internationally, including from American Library Association, Association of Jewish Libraries, The Christophers, National Council for the Social Studies, and the American Alliance for Theater and Education. His current focus is picture book texts for children. His prize-winning picture books are The Tree in the Courtyard (Knopf, 2016, illustrated by Peter McCarty), No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon’s Battle for Women’s Rights in Japan (Creston, 2020, illustrated by Shiella Witanto), Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Candlewick, 2021, illustrated by Matt Tavares), The Christmas Mitzvah (Creston, 2021, illustrated by Michelle Agatha), and Food for Hope: How John van Hengel Invented Food Banks for the Hungry (Creston, 2023). Upcoming are We All Serve (Candlewick, 2026, illustrated by TeMika Grooms), about the extraordinary lives of American’s military brat children, Honor Flight (Candlewick, 2026, illustrated by Matt Tavares), about the Honor Flight program that flies aging veterans and their volunteer “guardians” to Washington DC to visit their monuments, and Strike! For the Right to Read! (Creston, 2025), with Michelle Y. Green, illustrated by Kim Holt), about the 1939 Alexandria VA sit-down strike to integrate its then-segregated library. A native of Teaneck, New Jersey, he now lives in Los Angeles. Visit him at www.jeffgottesfeldwriter.com
I always admit that I am the most imperfect messenger for a picture book about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC, and the Tomb Guards who protect the sacred rest of our three Unknown Soldiers every moment of every day. I didn’t serve in the military. In fact, none of us four Gottesfeld brothers, nor my parents, nor grandparents, served. But as I grew up, I have become passionate in my belief that the United States military is the greatest fighting force for good the world has ever known. And so, passion for a subject is the starting place for every nonfiction picture book. I had it, in spades.
Of course, passion is less than useless when there’s no focus. For me, the starting place is the idea. Ideas come from everywhere. Some writers mine their own lives. That’s not me. I travel widely, read voraciously, and am always on the lookout. Museums? Check. Foreign newspapers in English or French? Check. Obituaries? A gold mine. The idea for Twenty-One Steps came on a visit to the Los Angeles National Cemetery on Memorial Day in 2016, when I saw a tombstone that said, UNKNOWN. That flashed me back to a boyhood trip to Arlington, and to the realization I knew practically zero about our nation’s secular shrine. I was determined to write the book by the time we left the cemetery that day.
Next, a point of view. There’s a lot of ways to tell a story. Some may be okay, some may be good, and usually one is just awesomely great. I struggled with this text until I got the idea that maybe I could tell the story from the point of view of the first Unknown, interred in 1921. That turned out to be the perspective, because that Unknown could be anyone, and thus belong to all of us. Try a few points of view. All it takes is time.
The next step for me is to figure out the story beats. Every story has beats, like music. The beats are the big notes of what happens. In Twenty-One Steps, a few of the main beats are meeting the first Unknown, his homecoming, his burial before 150,000 people, and the posting of the first Tomb Guard at midnight on July 2, 1937. There are others. If the writer knows the beats, the story is easier to tell. Of course, good research will help figure out the beats.
Then, I write. And write some more. Until I’ve got a draft.
Finally, I fix it. This can happen in a month, two months, or sometimes it takes five years and forty or fifty named drafts. Maybe if I’m stuck I’ll put it away for a few months. But there also comes a time when I’m fixing and fixing, and it isn’t getting any better or worse.
That’s when I know it’s time to stop. I’ve got a manuscript. And so will you.
I do want to add a few words about figuring out the right audience. I’m pretty ruthless about the subjects I choose. It’s not just that I’m interested in them, but it’s that I think there’s a universe of readers and book buyers out there that care, too. I try to match subject, grade level, and language, but always with no upper limit on whom the reader might be. That is, K to age 120 for The Christmas Mitzvah, first grade to age 120 for Food for Hope, and grade three to age 120 for Twenty-One Steps, a book about which I have presented to as many adult audiences as kid ones.
I was a young athlete before I ever became a writer, and would counsel young writers to approach writing like an elementary school or middle school athlete approaches a sport. Basically, no school-aged tennis player will beat Carlos or Serena, and no school-aged soccer player is going to start for the USMNT or USWNT. Being young is the time to learn from the best, and practice. So, young would-be writers need to read, read, and read some more. Smash the screens, and read. Reading good writing gets it inside you. And then, when they write, keep the expectations reasonable. Strive every day to get just a little better, or make it just a little better. There’s a long way to go, and you will get there one good sentence at a time.
Thanks so much for joining us, Jeff!
You can find Jeff on his website at www.jeffgottesfeldwriter.com. You can also check out his books Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, The Christmas Mitzvah, and Food For Hope: How John van Hengel Invented Food Banks for the Hungry.