Doodle 4 Google: 9-year-old's drawing hung on the biggest fridge of them all
Just days after its wildly successful Pac-Man logo, Google has changed its banner once again. Today, the company turns to budding artist Makenzie Melton, the 9-year-old winner of this year's Doodle 4 Google contest.
The annual competition collects thousands of student submissions and millions of votes from Google users. Poll results crowned Makenzie, a third grader from El Dorado Springs, Mo. Along with the honor of ruling Google's homepage for a day, Makenzie will receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a new computer, and $25,000 for her school to build a new computer lab.
Makenzie says that her Doodle 4 Google drawing, called "Rainforest Habitat,” aims to raise awareness that "the rainforest is in danger and it is not fair to the plants and animals. I love everything except spiders and snakes, but I would still save them.”
While the contest is open to students in kindergarten through grade 12, elementary schoolers have dominated the competition. Both of the previous Doodle 4 Google winners were in sixth grade.
Today's special logo shows again that Google is committed to increasingly frequent novelty banners. Before Pac-Man (which you can still play for free, by the way), there was the Tchaikovsky dancers, the Thumbelina flipbook, the Topeka April Fools' joke, and several others – all within a month of each other.
If Google asked you to draw your own doodle, what would you include? A holiday theme? A tribute to your favorite artist? Or maybe something crazy? Share your ideas in the comments below.
