Round One · Open now · Closes Sun 4 October
A writing competition for children under 14. Ten stories are printed in a paperback, published on Amazon.com.au, and posted free to the writer's door. Every child who enters gets an ebook with their own story in it.
The round one anthology. Ten stories, printed and posted free to the writers.
How it works
Your child writes a story on this round's theme. Between 300 and 1,200 words, depending on their age band. You have until the end of the spring school holidays.
Submit through this site in a few minutes. Entry is free, with a voluntary $1 toward running costs if you'd like to give it. Your child can type their story, or you can simply photograph the handwritten pages.
Read and scored against our four published criteria by our judging panel: Kevin Tan and two guest judges each round. Nothing is skimmed.
Three stories from each age band go into the anthology, plus one overall winner chosen across the whole field, whose story opens the book. The finished paperback is published on Amazon.com.au, and the ten selected writers each receive a printed copy in the post, free.
Every child who entered, selected or not, gets an ebook with their own story bound in at the back.
This round's theme
Almost every Australian family arrived from somewhere. Some last year. Some four generations ago. Some by plane with two suitcases, some without much choice in the matter.
This round, we're asking children to write about that.
We're not looking for sad stories. We're looking for true ones — funny, strange and ordinary all count.
Age bands
Age is taken as at the closing date. Three stories are selected from each band, plus one overall winner chosen across all three — ten stories in the book.
300–600 words · 3 selected
500–900 words · 3 selected
700–1,200 words · 3 selected
What you get
Not a participation certificate. An actual ebook, with a cover and a contents page and their story inside it, made for them alone.
Your child's edition
Every entrant's ebook is generated individually. The ten selected stories are the same in every copy; the last chapter is yours.
Every child who enters
The ten selected writers
The overall winner
And their school
Families who want extras
How stories are judged
Four things, weighted equally.
Does it sound like a real person wrote it? We'd much rather read a story that sounds like a nine-year-old than one imitating an adult.
Something happens, and it matters to somebody. A beginning, a middle, and an ending that earns itself.
The specific beats the general every time. "Grandma's kitchen smelled like burnt star anise" beats "Grandma's kitchen smelled nice."
Clear sentences, with spelling and grammar judged against the age band. Generous for the youngest writers, firmer for the oldest.
What we don't score
Handwriting, typing, formatting, or how much help a parent gave with the spelling. We score the story.
Who judges
Entries are assessed against the published criteria by our editorial panel, with final selection by Kevin Tan, author of Fine... I'll Do It.
On AI
Stories must be the child's own work. We're not running detection software and we won't accuse anyone — but the entire point of this is a child's voice, and an AI can't give you that. Please don't.
The schedule
Entries close at the end of Term 3. We read everything over the holidays, and you hear back the Monday school goes back.
Enter any time between now and the last day of term.
The end of the spring school holidays, the night before Term 4 begins. No late entries, the printing schedule doesn't bend.
Judging happens across the first week of Term 4, against the criteria published above.
Published here and emailed to every parent who entered, whether or not their child was selected. Nobody is left wondering.
Every entrant's personal edition lands within days of results. The ten paperbacks go to the printer the same week.
Printing and post take about a fortnight. We'll email a tracking note when yours ships.
Entry
Takes about five minutes. Entries close 11:59pm, Sunday 4 October 2026, the end of the spring school holidays.
Entry received
You have just given your child something most of us never had: a real reason to write, and a real book waiting at the end of it. Whatever happens in the judging, they have already done the brave part.
We've emailed a confirmation. Every story is read across the first week of Term 4, and every parent hears back on Monday 12 October, selected or not. Nobody is left wondering. Your child's personal ebook, with their story as the closing chapter, arrives by Saturday 17 October.
Running a round costs money: printing and posting the winners' paperbacks, generating every entrant's ebook, the website, and the payment fees. A voluntary $1 goes to that, and nothing else.
Next round
We run several rounds a year, each with a new theme. Leave your email and we'll tell you when the next one opens — no more than one email a month, ever.
About
Because that's where it happens. A spelling test cried over. The story your uncle tells every single Christmas, the same way, like it's the first time. A grandparent's voice, doing an accent nobody else in the family can quite do anymore.
Most children do their first real writing at this table. Most families do their remembering here too, out loud, over dinner, and almost never written down. Which means most of it disappears with whoever was telling it.
There is another reason it matters that the ending is a book. Almost everything a child makes now lives on a screen: a photo buried in a phone, a document in a folder nobody opens again, a post that has scrolled out of sight by morning. It is all there somewhere, and none of it is ever really held. A book is the opposite. It has weight. You can put it in a grandparent's hands, stand it on a shelf, and find it again in twenty years with your child's own words still inside. No battery, no password, no feed carrying it away. It simply waits, quietly, for the next person to open it.
The Kitchen Table Book was started by Kevin Tan, a Melbourne writer and the author of Fine... I'll Do It, a book of practical, straightforward advice for teenagers. He lives in Melbourne's east and has spent a long time thinking about what happens to a family's stories when nobody writes them down.
The bookshelf
See the anthologies as they are published, each one on Amazon.com.au and posted free to the young writers inside.
See the books