Gretchen Zaitzeff is a children’s literacy warrior, storming the front lines with books as her weapons and knowledge as her armor. “Democracy depends on it,” says Canyons District’s Library and Media Specialist. “Democracy depends on an informed electorate.”
Zaitzeff’s efforts have earned her the praise of her peers. She received Operation Literacy’s 2025 “Book Hero Award” at the StoryCon conference in downtown Salt Lake. In 2023, she earned an Apex Award from Canyons District’s Board of Education and Administration.
What drives her, though, is “the next chapter.” For Zaitzeff, who was the kind of kid you’d catch late at night reading under the covers with a flashlight, the literacy battle is personal — borne from a deep love of books — and more imperative than ever.
Through her work, and the District’s continued commitment to teaching reading using techniques grounded in science, Canyons is making literacy gains. The Utah State Board of Education in December 2024 released a report showing the percentage of each school district’s third graders who were reading on grade level at the end of last year — and Canyons was the No. 1 district in Salt Lake County.
Reading takes practice, admits Zaitzeff, who also firmly believes practice can be fun.
Unrelenting in her push to promote reading, she expanded the District’s Book Blitz competition to include elementary students. Book Blitz encourages teams of students to consume up to a dozen books from which they draw upon to answer quiz-show-style questions. Many of the student contestants take pride in reading all 12 books multiple times.
In her role as President of the Utah School Library Association, Zaitzeff collaborated with the Utah State Library Youth Services Coordinator to establish the state’s Ambassadors for Young People’s Literature Award. This award celebrates local authors while providing opportunities for them to visit schools statewide. In the past two years, the Utah ambassador program held five library events, reaching 1,300 students.
She advocated to overhaul the outdated library collections at 30 schools. She was instrumental in crafting Canyons’ library policy, a model adopted by other districts. And she worked with her peers in CSD’s Instructional Supports Department to land a News Literacy Project grant for teacher training.
In three years, Canyons has trained more than 300 teachers to embed information literacy lessons in their regular instruction. In other words: teaching students to analyze and interpret the information they encounter on social media, TV and across the digital realm.
Librarianship, Zaitzeff says, is about helping “students learn to love reading and become conscientious consumers of information.”
What’s next for CSD’s book hero? Knowing Zaitzeff, we’ll be reading more about her adventures in the near future — and it will be a real page-turner.
