By Patricia Bogumil
Interim Editor
Armed with colored pencils and markers, Dylan Hoffman, 7, of Raymond, created a swashbuckling doodle to pirate away a major stash of cash from Google, the Internet giant that runs the world’s most popular search engine.
On May 17, at ceremonies held in New York City, Dylan was named the 2012 U. S. Doodle 4 Google National Winner. The contest drew 114,000 submissions.
With his win, Dylan came into some treasure of his own, earning a $30,000 college scholarship, a Chromebook computer and the honor of being selected for the front of a special edition of the Crayola 64-crayon box.
Dylan’s “Pirate Times” sketch, which incorporates the Google logo, also earned him 24 hours of fame May 18 on the search engine giant’s home page.
This year’s Google contest theme was: “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…”
Dylan featured himself as the pirate in his sketch, along with a parrot, ship, sun, palm tree and treasure chest, all artfully spelling out the letters in “Google.”
Public voting for the contest took place online from May 2 to May 10. From there, five national finalists, one from each grade division, were chosen and announced at the awards ceremony in New York City on May 17.
Judges then named Dylan as the one overall winner from the five finalists.
Speaking Friday by phone from his hotel room in New York City, Dylan said it took him about a month to create his winning logo from start to finish. “It just came into my head,” explained Dylan, who said he’s a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Getting a $30,000 scholarship was all well and good, but Dylan sounded especially excited about one of the lesser-known perks of winning the contest: “I also got a toy snake as big as me!”
Dylan is the son of Katharina and Mark Hoffman. His winning Google doodle also earned a $50,000 technology grant for Prairie School in Racine, where Dylan attends second grade.
The doodle artwork created by Dylan and the other 49 state winners is on display at a special exhibition in the New York Public Library through July 19.
Dylan received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Prairie School this week. The excitement continues Friday, when the whole school will enjoy a lunch time treat in his honor.
Dylan’s second-grade teacher, Kathryn Chiapetta, described him as a wonderful student full of imagination, questions and wonder. Besides art, Dylan loves science the most, she added.
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