The

PBS Kids PBS Kids (stylized as PBS KIDS) is the branding used for nationally distributed children's programming carried by the U.S. public television network PBS. The brand encompasses a daytime block of children's programming carried daily by most PBS ...

Writers Contest is an annual art and literature competition for students grades

kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...

to 12 in the United States. The competition was relaunched under the name PBS Kids Go! Writers Contest in 2009 as a continuation from its predecessor called Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest which was started in 1995.

Early years

In 1995, the first competition was launched by the creators of ''

Reading Rainbow ''Reading Rainbow'' is an American educational children's television series that originally aired on PBS and afterward PBS Kids from July 11, 1983 to November 10, 2006, with reruns continuing to air until August 28, 2009. 155 30-minute episodes ...

'' children television program. The annual competition had been sponsored to complement the Reading Rainbow program to inspire children to have a lifelong love of reading. The competition encouraged, challenged and rewarded children to write and illustrate their own

picture book A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The ima ...

s. The entries were submitted to the local stations for local judging. The winners at local level would then be submitted for national-level judging. After a few years, the number of entries that were submitted nationally had been increased to almost 40,000. The number of participants continued to increase at the peak in 2007 with more than 50,000 entries.

''Reading Rainbow'' funding

The future of the competition became questionable starting in 2006 when the funding for the ''Reading Rainbow'' program started to dry up. There was a new funding agreement but no new program had been produced since April 2006 when the commitment for funding of 52 new episodes did not pan out. The program was on a

rerun A rerun or repeat is a rebroadcast of an episode of a radio or television program. The two types of reruns are those that occur during a hiatus and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Variations In the United Kingdom, the word "repe ...

since then by another funding source. This funding issue caused the creators to cancel the national-level competition in 2006. However, the local competitions organized by local public broadcasting stations continued. As the participants of the competition continued to grow into 2007 even without any new episode of ''Reading Rainbow'', the

WNED-TV WNED-TV (channel 17), branded BTPM PBS, is a PBS member television station in Buffalo, New York, United States. It is owned by the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association (doing business as Buffalo Toronto Public Media) alongside NPR m ...

station in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

which was a co-creator of the program took ownership to administrate the national-level judging. The national-level competition resumed in 2007. The ''Reading Rainbow'' rerun had finally come to an end on August 28, 2009. At that time, the level of participation in the competition was still high with 90 participating stations. With a strong call for expansion of the competition despite the cancellation of the program, the PBS headquarters arranged to have the winning entries to continue to be accessible online as they had been until December 2009.

Relaunch

In November 2009, PBS secured its partnership with WNED-TV to launch the competition in the same format as in prior years but with the new name as ''

PBS Kids Go! PBS Kids Go! was an American educational television brand used by PBS for programs aimed at school-age children ages 6 to 8, in contrast to the preschool target demographic of PBS Kids. Most PBS member stations aired the PBS Kids Go! block o ...

Writers Contest''. They also launched a new website for the competition to update information and archive winning stories. In 2014, one year after the discontinuation of PBS Kids Go!,

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

changed the name of the Writers Contest to the ''PBS Kids Writers Contest''.

Format

Children who are in grades K through 3 within the viewing areas of participate local stations can submit their entries to their local stations. Stories can be fact or fiction, and prose or poetry but each story must be done by a single author. Stories with the illustrations done by kindergarten and first grade have word count of 50-200 words, and 100-350 words for grades 2 and 3. Each local PBS station handles local judging separately by grade levels. The first place winners from each station are sent to the national contest later in the year.

References

{{reflist Reading and literacy television series American children's literary awards Writing contests American visual arts awards Reading Rainbow

Early years

''Reading Rainbow'' funding

Relaunch

Format

See also

References