Google just revealed that Arantza Peña Popo is the 2019 Doodle for Google winner and the high school senior has dedicated her inspiring artwork to her mom.
Arantza was just three years old when she first started drawing and now her talents have earned her the winning title in this national competition, which thousands of students across the country enter each year. The person she most has to thank for her win, however, is her mom. “When I grow up, I hope to care for my mom as much as she cared for me my entire life,” Arantza wrote in the statement submitted with her artwork.
The winning doodle titled “Once you get it, give it back” was created for the contest’s annual theme, “When I grow up, I hope…” As Arantza describes it, the doodle depicts “a framed picture of my mother carrying me as a baby (a real picture in my house) and below the picture is me, caring for her when she’s older in the future.”
Arantza appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon as Fallon, who was one of the contest judges, revealed the winning entry. “I wanted to make it more personal to me, so I decided to make it about my mother,” Arantza explained to Fallon. “She’s made so many sacrifices for me, so I kind of wanted to show me paying it back in the future.”
photo: Google
Since her submission, Arantza has graduated as valedictorian of her class and will be attending the University of Southern California with the $30,000 scholarship that she has been awarded from Google. She hopes to write and illustrate comic books and graphic novels and clearly she’s off to a notable start. Her winning doodle was chosen from over 200,000 submissions.
—Shahrzad Warkentin
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