girls school
girls schoolIsrael new photo: Flash 90

Johanna Robinson, an 11-year-old student at an orthodox Jewish day school in Maryland, is a finalist for Google’s annual “Doodle 4 Google” contest. 

More than 114,000 kids from kindergarten through grade 12 drew pictures using the search engine’s logo. The theme for this year’s contest was: “If I could travel in time, I’d visit . . .”

The caption below Johanna’s illustration, which celebrates crafts including crocheting and sewing states, “Several generations ago, things were not mass produced as they are today. Instead, many items had to be handmade. If I could travel in time, I'd visit my Hungarian ancestors and receive needlecraft lessons from experts whose homes and livelihoods centered on this unique talent.”

Each year Google takes submissions for an original logo design that will appear on their homepage. This year they received over 100,000 submissions.

“Johanna’s teachers say that she is a good writer and a terrific artist but, more importantly, she has such beautiful middot,” Johanna’s mother, Rachel Robinson told VIN News. “When she found out that she was one of the finalists she took the news so modestly.  Her whole attitude was so beautiful and we are so proud of her.”

Representatives from Google visited Johanna’s school, the Torah Day School, and spoke to the students about their classmate’s achievement.

“The Google people brought twenty five balloons for Johanna and as it turns out, there are exactly twenty five girls in Johanna’s class,” the school’s headmaster, Rabbi Churner said.  “Johanna made sure that each one of them went home with a balloon that day.  She really is an amazing girl.”

The national winner, from among the 250 finalists, will be chosen May 17 and the winning doodle will be on the Google home page May 18.