By Julie Rossman
Correspondent
Dylan Hoffman’s Doodle 4 Google will land him and his parents a trip to New York City this month, with a chance to win a $30,000 college scholarship, and a $50,000 technology grant for his school. All because he entered the Doodle 4 Google contest and was chosen from 114,000 entries as the Wisconsin finalist in the nationwide competition.
Dylan is the son of Mark and Katharina Hoffman, Raymond, and is a second grader at The Prairie School in Racine.
Google representatives traveled to Dylan’s School on May 2 for an assembly where they announced him as a winner and where Dylan revealed his prize-winning drawing to classmates and teachers.
“Art is my favorite subject,” Dylan admitted during the assembly, where he was interviewed by Google representatives, by local television crews and newspaper reporters.
The contest theme was, “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…” Dylan chose pirate times for his theme. “I always liked pirates,” Dylan said. “No one else did pirates.”
Dylan featured himself as the pirate, along with a parrot, a ship, a sun, a palm tree and of course, a treasure chest, with the Google letters very artfully featured in the picture.
“Mine was like a real picture…like it’s happening,” he said.
“I am so proud of him,” said Christine Pearson, Dylan’s art teacher. She said he came to her with his drawing and she provided encouragement.
“He thought and thought – he wanted to make those letters show,” Pearson said.
Public voting for the contest took place at google.com from May 2 – 10. From there, five national finalists, one from each grade division, were chosen and were announced at an awards ceremony in New York City on May 17. As of press time, results were not available.
Judges will choose one overall winner from the five finalists. In addition to the college scholarship and a school grant, the winner’s doodle will be featured on the Google homepage all day on May 18.
Dylan’s mom, Katharina, is the one who told Dylan about the contest. She says she feels very proud of her son. “I feel like I’ve taught him to have goals and to reach those goals…that he can achieve what he wants,” she said.
As for Dylan, he’s just taking it all in. He had fun being featured on TV – he even got to go up to a Milwaukee TV station for a live feature. And he was very excited for the trip to New York.
As for his future, Dylan’s art teacher seems pretty confident, “I think art will be in his career in the future,” Pearson said. “He’s a wonderful artist.”
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