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ALLENTOWN: Third-grader wins national T-shirt design contest

Achievement nets $5,000 grant for Newell Elementary School

By Rachel Lavery, Special Writer
   ALLENTOWN — Newell Elementary third-grader Ava Strovinsky looks forward to her Tuesday art class, but she recently was taken by surprise when her art teacher, Tamara Diaczenko, came looking for her during math class.
   Unbeknownst to 8-year-old Ava, she had just won the grand prize in the third-grade category in the nationwide “What Makes U Smile” T-shirt design contest sponsored by kids’ clothing store P.S. from Aéropostale.
   ”Ms. Diaczenko pulled me out of class into the hallway, and she was crying,” Ava recalled. “I couldn’t understand a word she was saying and wondered if I was in trouble. Then we went into her art room, and she explained to me that she just got off the phone with the Aeropostale people, and they told her that I won the contest. I was so excited I couldn’t feel my legs, and I wanted to scream!” Ava said.
   Ava’s T-shirt design, an old-fashioned red-and-white striped popcorn box with popcorn exploding in the air alongside the store’s initials, was chosen from among 50,000 nationwide entries from students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
   At a school assembly next month, Ava will receive a $500 P.S. from Aeropostale gift card and 50 free T-shirts of her winning design for friends and family. Newell Elementary School will receive a $5,000 grant for art supplies.
   Additionally, P.S from Aeropostale will be featuring the winners of its in-school contest in the windows of its stores.
   According to Ms. Diaczenko, Newell Elementary School has participated in the contest for three years. Last year, the school produced four finalists. Ava is the school’s first grand-prize winner.
   Ava approached the contest’s instructions to draw “What Makes You Smile” with a bit of pragmatism.
   ”I thought about what makes me smile, and that is either popcorn or my hamster,” she said. “But since I cannot draw a hamster, I decided to draw popcorn.”
   Ava said she thought about how she always goes into the kitchen to pop popcorn in the microwave whenever she watches movies at home.
   ”I thought it would be fun and exciting if popcorn was flying in the air instead of just sitting in a bowl,” Ava said. “I picked blue as the background color because blue is my favorite color.”
   Ava counts art as one of her favorite subjects and participates in the KidzArt afterschool program in which students use different mediums, including crayons, magic markers, colored pencils and oil pastels. The “What Makes You Smile” T-shirt design contest was the first art contest she had ever entered.
   ”I was really happy that I won money for art supplies for the school because I love art!” she said.
   Ava said deciding who to give the 50 free T-shirts featuring her design to will be difficult. She wants to give them to her family, some friends and teachers, and she says she definitely will share them with her cousins and her grandparents in Florida.
   ”Even boys want my T-shirts; I am even giving one to my brother, Ben,” Ava said.
   The awards ceremony will take place at Newell Elementary School on March 22 when a representative of P.S. from Aeropostale will be present to give Ava her award and gift card. All students at the assembly will receive a voucher for a free T-shirt from P.S. from Aeropostale.