February 23, 2017

Vote for South Jersey girl's Doodle 4 Google drawing

By Michael Tanenbaum
PhillyVoice Staff

Source/Allison Kang/Google

"Fly to the 'Google'" by Allison Kang, a third grader at Cherry Hill's Sharp Elementary School.

The state of New Jersey has a champion in this year's national Doodle 4 Google contest. Now it's up to the voting public to make sure that Allison Kang, a third grader at Cherry Hill's Sharp Elementary School, gets her drawing up on the front page of the search engine that handles more than 3.5 billion queries per day.

Each year, Google's contest is open to students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Using any materials of their choosing, the students are asked to create a Google design in response to a prompt that varies year by year. They're also asked to submit a 50-word essay to back up the drawing, although that appears to be a lax requirement for the younger contestants.

This year's prompt was: "What I see for the future..."

Kang, who was honored Thursday at a school assembly, drew a picture of a little girl with wings, entitled "Fly to the 'Google.'" Her essay stated, "I think in the future everyone will have a pair of wings and is allowed to fly around with it."

Source/Allison Kang/Google

“Fly to the 'Google'” by Allison Kang, a third grader at Cherry Hill's Sharp Elementary School.

Judges in the contest included celebrities such as Jimmy Kimmel, Olympian Simone Biles and Pikachu (well, his creators, anyway). As a state finalist in her age group, Allison has already won an Android tablet. What happens next is up to the internet to decide. She has a shot at a $30,000 college scholarship, $50,000 for Sharp Elementary School and a place on Google's homepage.

You can cast your vote once a day for Allison's drawing until voting closes on March 6 at 5 p.m.