Sinking Ship Entertainment is taking a trip to Wordsville, with commissioning broadcaster TVOKids and New York PBS affiliate WNET coming along for the ride. 

The busy Canadian prodco has just announced that it’s working on a new live-action mystery series for four- to seven-year-olds that’s designed to teach literacy and build essential vocabulary skills.

Wordsville stars two child detectives on the hunt for missing words that are causing chaos in their town. Production is set to start in 2024, and Sinking Ship will distribute the series when it’s done. 

“Learning to read can be like putting together a puzzle for kids, so combining sleuthing with literacy was a perfect fit for Wordsville,” says series creator and showrunner Christin Simms, who is writer and executive producer on Sinking Ship’s Dino Dan/Dino Dana franchise and also director of the upcoming Dino Dex. 

TVOKids ordered Wordsville to address a post-pandemic learning gap in Ontario, says commissioning editor Kirsten Hurd. She adds that similar to Sinking Ship’s popular YouTube Original Lockdown (the first episode of which has generated more than a million views), this new show will be shot entirely on phones, computers and platforms like Zoom to reflect the myriad ways in which kids now communicate with people in their lives.

Sinking Ship’s J.J. Johnson (Endlings) and Blair Powers (Odd Squad) are executive producers of Wordsville.