Portsmouth 1st Grader is RI Google Doodle Winner, Needs National Votes

PORTSMOUTH, RI—A Portsmouth first grader’s love of dinosaurs and art has made him a winner here in Rhode Island. And, with your help, he could soon be a national winner with a ticket to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, where he’ll sit down with a team of professional doodlers in charge of decorating the busiest web page in the world.

Nathan Navarez, a student at Saint Philomena School in Portsmouth, is one of 53 national winners in the Doodle 4 Google Competition, a contest open to K-12 students across the United States to redesign the Google logo.

The theme was “What makes me...me” and Navarez’s Google doodle is bona fide expression of his love of dinosaurs.

He calls it “Undiscovered Googlesaurus” and said “I love dinos with spikes and sharp teeth. One day I will become a paleontologist and share my findings with all kids in the world.”

Vote for Nathan HERE.

Navarez unearthed remarkable talent when he crafted his Google doodle, which depicts spiny bones, jaws and spikes to form the trademark Google letters. The design is clever, detailed and brilliantly executed, and could easily be mistaken as the work of someone five times his senior.

His work struck a chord with the judges who selected it out of the 100,000 submissions received this year in the eighth year of the contest.

Google will announce five national finalists and one national winner on March 21. The winner’s Google doodle will go live on Google.com that day.

The winning student and national finalists will travel to Mountain View, California, to meet and workshop with Google’s team of professional doodlers and see what it takes to launch a Doodle on the Google homepage. This year, the National Finalist can also nominate a teacher who has inspired them to come along on the trip. The National Winner will take home a $30,000 college scholarship and his or her school will receive a $50,000 Google for Education grant towards the establishment and improvement of a computer lab or technology program.

Voting is open to anyone in the USA and voting opens Friday, Feb. 5 until Feb. 22.

Nathan’s entry can be found here. To see a full list of state winners, visit: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html