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About 50 talented high school art students and 25 middle schoolers from here in Blount County competed in the Read Across America youth art contest sponsored by Sylvan Learning Centers.

The wealth of talent was so great there was no way to pick one winner from among the high school entries, said Robin Henderson, center director of the Sylvan Learning Center in Maryville.

So they chose two.

Amanda Tucker, a sophomore at William Blount, and Paige Meadows, a senior at Alcoa High, were the two selected.

In the middle school category, the winner was Tori Simmons, a sixth-grader.

Combined reading, arts

The artists were challenged to combine their love of reading with their graphic arts talent to come up with a design for a skateboard deck. The annual contest has become very popular with the students, and art teachers like William Blount's Doris Poppelreiter get the chance to show them what's out there career wise.

"In my classroom this contest was set up like a class assignment and Sylvan was the client," Poppelreiter said. The students worked for weeks on the entries that used books like "Jungle Book," "Twilight," "Harry Potter" and even the Bible to illustrate for the contest.

Read Across America is a nationwide project of the National Education Association to promote reading. Read Across America Day is celebrated on March 2, the birthday of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss. It started in 1997.

"The Lovely Bones" was Meadow's choice for this art contest, while Simmons chose "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Tucker used "Twilight" in her design. Having read all four books and seen the movie, she was very familiar with the characters and storyline.

Henderson said Tucker's work was easily identifiable with the book and a frontrunner with all the judges.

Student inspired

This is really the first art contest Tucker has won. She said it has given her the confidence to enter others. She hopes to make it one day as an artist.

Those words are music to Poppelreiter's ears. Her purpose in doing this contest was for her students to see what an art education can become.

"I try to make connections between careers and art," Poppelreiter said.

"Contests like this help them understand that as a graphic artist you can design skateboard, snow boards, tennis shoes. Anything that is visual that is created, an artist is behind it. We have become a very visual world."

Henderson said this is a project Sylvan plans to continue with. Each of the three local winners was given a skateboard with her design placed on it. Tucker said she plans to hang hers on the wall.