MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A drawing for Google has landed a Monongalia County elementary school student in a national competition.
Online voting for what will be five finalists in the 2019 Doodle 4 Google Competition starts at 12 p.m. ET today. In all, there are 53 entries from each state along with Puerto Rico, Guam and Washington, D.C.
Ava Monroe, age 10, a 4th grade student at North Elementary School, is the winner from West Virginia.
“It feels a lot different now,” Monroe told MetroNews. “Before I was just hoping I would win the state one and now I’m just really hoping that I can win nationals.”
The theme for this year’s competition was “When I grow up, I hope to…”
Monroe’s drawing includes herself and the Google logo.
“I tried to make it so that it could show I wanted to travel a lot and, every place I wanted to travel, I was hoping it could be clean and all the animals there would be safe and all the people there,” she explained.
“I also tried to show that whenever I grow up I also want to be a photographer or an actress.”
Her doodle caption was as follows:
“When I grow up I hope I have a good job that I love and that lets me help others. I hope it takes me different places and that everywhere I travel is clean and beautiful.”
Along with considering the theme, Monroe, the daughter of Jeff and Annie Monroe, looked at past doodle entries before she started drawing.
“From each one, it started giving me some more inspiration,” she said.
To her surprise, Monroe’s Doodle 4 Google state win was announced during an assembly on the final day of school last week.
“Whenever I heard she wanted to be an actress and she wanted to fly, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s all the things I wanted to do,'” she said of what she was thinking during the assembly.
Through Friday, people can vote for a doodle once per day per device at doodle4google.com to determine the five finalists.
Those finalists win a trip to Google headquarters in California and a $5,000 scholarship.
Jimmy Fallon, host of “The Tonight Show,” Kermit the Frog and Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, will select one winner from the finalists.
In addition to seeing his or her doodle featured on Google’s homepage for a day, the grand prize winner gets a $30,000 scholarship and a $50,000 technology package for their school.
Each year since 2008, the Doodle 4 Google competition has been open to entries from students in grades kindergarten through 12 in the United States and, separately, other countries.