If pictures are worth a thousand words, then two young Oak Harbor artists will speak volumes to children and library patrons throughout Snohomish and Island counties.

Laura Stump, 5, who is a kindergartner at Oak Harbor’s Hillcrest Elementary, and Matias Tercero, 7, who is a second-grade homeschooler, received recognition Nov. 8 for the drawings they submitted to the bookmark drawing contest the Sno-Isle Libraries had in honor of National Children’s Book Week, Nov. 15-21.

National Children’s Book Week started in 1919 and is now in its 85th year. It is a week designated to celebrate stories, books and the love and mystery of reading. Nationwide, teachers, librarians, authors, illustrators, parents and children celebrate National Children’s Book Week in a variety of traditions that are centered around books and reading.

For the Sno-Isle bookmark drawing contest, 20 libraries throughout the two counties received entries from children between preschool and sixth grade. Library personnel, after much deliberation, then selected one child’s drawing from each grade to reprint as a bookmark.

The contestants submitted drawings of anything from classic storybook illustrations to original works from their imagination.

Jonalyn Woolf-Ivory, library director of the Sno-Isle Libraries, said she enjoys watching kids get involved with their local libraries and growing through books and the experiences and adventures they provide. As she awarded Laura and Matias with their certificates of recognition, Woolf-Ivory congratulated them.

“This is one of my favorite days, when I get to come out here and meet a local artist,” she said. “I really want to thank you for coming to the library and giving us some of your art that we can keep in the library for a really long time.”

Woolf-Ivory also thanked Laura’s and Matias’s parents for making the library a part of their families’ activities and traditions.

“One of the things that we read about children, who do well at school and children who do well at home, is one of the most important things that happens for them is that they are introduced to books,” she said.

Kay O’Conell, the children’s service manager from the Sno-Isle Library Service Center in Marysville, said Laura and Matias should feel very proud of themselves.

“I would like to congratulate you,” O’Conell said. “Of course the hardest part of my job is looking at all the entries and deciding on the very best … this year we had a thousand entries.”

Out of 1,000 entries, O’Conell said they can only chose nine winners; one for every grade and one as the most original.

She said every year she finds herself surprised at the sheer creativity and artistry of children, and she said most of the time it is the youngest that are the most bold and original.

Laura, who decorated her bookmark with the three little pigs and the wolf, said she wanted to draw the wolf especially, because she thinks he’s cool and he says that he’ll “huff and puff and blow the house down.”

Matias drew a paint brush painting of a scene from the classic rhyme, “Hey Diddle Diddle.” The verse he chose was, “And the dish ran away with the spoon,” and that’s just what it looked like.

After signing their names on a copy of their printed bookmarks, Laura and Matias listened as Woolf-Ivory told them that these bookmarks would get framed and hung in the Oak Harbor Library, to celebrate the two local artists who drew them.