Why I Started a National Writing Contest for Kids: Story Search Canada!

Let me get the disclosure out of the way first, because you deserve it: I’m Zoe Share, I manage Daddy’s Digest, and I’m the founder of Zoe’s Story Labs, and Story Search Canada is my project. I’m not writing this as a reporter who stumbled onto a good story. I’m writing it as the mom who started the program. So take my enthusiasm with the appropriate grain of salt — and then let me try to earn it.

Here’s the version that’s easier to digest: I’m a Canadian parent who got tired of reading alarming headlines about children’s literacy and decided to do something about it at my own kitchen table. That table is now a company, 50 books written by actual kids, and a national author search open to every child in the country. None of it happened because I had perfect a business plan, though I definitely have a lot of very epic . It happened because my kids asked me for help writing stories.

The numbers I can’t stop thinking about…

I want to tell you what keeps me up at night, what makes me feel worried for my kids and for the future of Canada, because the research is the honest engine behind all of this.

Only 13% of Canadian students demonstrate the advanced reading skills needed to critically evaluate information and understand complex texts (Statistics Canada). Nearly 1 in 5 Canadian adults aged 16 to 65 have low literacy skills (OECD, 2024). And the habit that quietly powers strong readers, the thing that I have turned to my whole life: reading for pleasure…has faded: the share of nine-year-olds who read for fun nearly every day has dropped 16 percentage points in thirteen years (U.S. Department of Education / NCES).

This isn’t just an academic problem. Pediatric experts now treat low literacy as a public health concern, linked to anxiety, lower self-esteem, and behavioural challenges in kids (Canadian Paediatric Society, 2024). Layer on screen time and it feels even more icky: children who exceed six hours of recreational screen time a day report significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression, while kids who stay within the guidelines are 1.5 times more likely to report excellent mental health (Public Health Agency of Canada). Eighty-three percent of Canadians say they’re worried about social media’s effect on children (Ipsos). I’m one of them, because I know the impact it’s had on me. Over a decade of working in digital spaces left me feeling dysregulated, burned out and

But I didn’t want to start one more program telling kids to read more. I wanted to flip it. What if we handed children the pen and let them become the authors? My hypothesis is that when children become excited about the craft of writing, then they do what every writer does…they begin to read and write obsessively!

How it all works

After many years of entrepreneurship, I haven’t been sure how to feel about getting back into starting another company. In December 2025, just six months ago, my kids kept asking me to help them write their own stories, so we wrote one over the Winter Break. Then, I started a small lunchtime club, with twenty kids, no screens, just paper, pencil crayons, pencils and imagination. My husband, the amazing father and husband that he is, was all in and helped me work through the steps that it would take to pull it off. Our kids helped me design the logo and talked to me at the dinner table about my lesson plans.

The method I have developed, Story Through It, is deliberately old-fashioned: brainstorm, write, illustrate, edit, publish, celebrate. Screen-free, under ten hours, a real printed book at the end. And I’ll be honest about the hardest part…we don’t make it easy. Writing a real book is hard. That’s the point. The kids get stuck. They get frustrated. A story idea feels good on Day 1, but by the 4th lesson, some kids are freaking out a bit. “Can I change my story?” “I’ll rewrite the whole thing at home, Zoe!” Then they revise, push through, and finish and discover they can do hard things. That moment is the whole reason I do this. It’s about SO much more than literacy, even though the literacy reason is compelling enough to make me want to shout it from the rooftops.

Why I took it national

By spring, schools and camps were asking to bring it in for the fall, and we’d published 50 young authors. I could have kept it small and tidy. Instead I did the thing my family now braces for whenever I get an idea: I decided to open it up to the whole country.

Story Search Canada is a national author search for Canadian children ages 7 to 12, and submissions are open now through September 30, 2026. There’s more than $5,000 in prizes, three children will be named Story Search Canada Authors of the Year, the winning books are professionally published and judged by a national panel of Canadian authors and illustrators, and we’ll celebrate the winners at an Author Celebration in Toronto. Every child who enters gets a free Storyteller’s Kit, so trying it costs nothing but a little courage.

I believe in ZoesStoryLabs.ca, I believe in StorySearch.ca, I built it with my family, and I think it can help make a difference. When children write stories, they strengthen their literacy and communication skills, build real confidence, and discover that their voice matters. I’ve watched it happen in my own living room, and I cannot wait to see what happens next.

So here’s my ask, parent to parent. The deadline is in September. If you have a kid between seven and twelve, clear a few hours here and there, put down the screens, and hand your kids a pencil. Every child has a story worth telling and I’d love nothing more than to help yours tell it.

Storysearch.ca

ZoesStoryLabs.ca