An Erie second grader is the Pennsylvania State winner for Doodle for Google Contest 2021.
Now Avyan Shah, 8, needs your vote to win the grand prize of a $30,000 college scholarship plus a $50,000 tech package for his school, Robison Elementary.
Vote for Avyan's artwork through May 14 here: https://doodles.google.com/d4g/vote/. You can find his artwork, titled "My Taekwondo Journey," under Pennsylvania.
Vote now!
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The theme for the Google Doodle was “I’m strong because…”
Avyan centered his around his taekwondo journey at Park's Taekwondo in Erie.
He wrote: “I am strong because of Taekwondo. It teaches me self-defense. This doodle represents my Taekwondo journey. I drew myself in white belt at age 4, my training equipment (nunchucks, kickboxing, kicking pad, sword) & black belt I earned at age 7. Taekwondo makes me mentally strong too."
An 8-year-old author
Macaroni Kid Erie was lucky enough to have a chance to talk with Avyan earlier this month about another project of his, a book he self-published on Amazon called "True or False? Incredible Facts About. ... The Human Body!" The 51-page book tells about the human body with easy-to-understand explanations using a true and false question format.
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Here's what Avyan told us:
Q: Tell me about you: Where you go to school, what's your favorite things in the world?
I go to Robison Elementary school in 2nd grade. I like reading, art, taekwondo, playing indoors and outdoors, basketball, watching TV and going on vacations.
Q: Why did you decide to write a book?
My teacher gave me a project to make a book from several genres. I selected the “true or false nonfiction” genre.
Q: Why did you want to write about the human body?
I have an interest in space and life, and I was already doing a space project at that time. So I decided to write about the human body.
Q: How did you research it and how did you decide what to include?
I researched through several websites and books. I tried to find very interesting facts about the human body that I thought most people would not know.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced along the way?
The biggest challenge was to research and find the facts. Most of the websites and books had very common facts.
Q: What advice would you give kids who want to write a book but don't know where to start?
They can start with Google slides and add the information in there to start with. Then, someone needs to give them an account to Book Creator where they can make a book from their rough draft. Finally, parents can help publish the book.
Q: Do you have any writing tips for kids?
Start the draft with simple complete sentences and a sequencing chart. Don't worry too much about spelling or grammar in your draft. You need to do those things in your revising, editing and proofreading.
Q: What will you do with any money you earn from the book?
I will be donating all the profit earned from this book to my school & some portion to American Heart Association.
Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
I want to be an astronaut, archaeologist, artist, and also be something related to life.
