Longbranch Teen Wins Pierce County Library Card Design Contest

Seventeen-year-old Sophia Hanson won the latest Pierce County Library System contest, adding her artwork to the popular ongoing series of youth-designed library cards.

“Sophia submitted a fantasy-forest themed image that evoked the fun and imagination of what reading could bring,” said Nikki Atienza, a teen services librarian at the Gig Harbor, Steilacoom, and Key Center Library branches. “Her artwork was one of two designs selected to be the latest edition to our library card options.”

Contest rules limit the artwork to portrait or landscape orientation up to 7-by-11 inches. A total of 574 entries were culled by local Tacoma artist and educator, Angela Larsen, to a short list of finalists for library patrons to vote for their favorites online in two age groups, 5-11 and 12-18.

Hanson learned of the contest after her mother stopped at the Key Center branch to pick up books for her younger sister and returned with contest information and entry blanks to draw on.

“I had been sketching in my sketchbook not long before the contest happened and was like drawing a tree with a bookshelf inside it, so I incorporated that into it,” Hanson said. “I was drawing fairies a bit before that, so I put that in too. It all just came together.”

She doesn’t frequent the library as much as she did in early childhood, but she recalled great memories of all the little-kid things and the special librarians in her life.

“Oh, I remember the daffodil princesses coming here, and I’d come to visit them every year. And there were lots of fun science things that went on, too. There’s a lot of memories here.”

Sophia is currently homeschooled while enrolled in Running Start at Tacoma Community College and is on track to graduate next year alongside her former classmates at Burley Christian School High School in the class of 2027.

While her mother, local artist Adria Hanson, is an accomplished professional, for now, Sophia says she enjoys doing art for fun, when she’s in the mood for it.

“I was at an art show last weekend, and so I was making a lot of cards for that, and that’s fun because you get your own time to just listen to music and draw and do whatever. That’s kind of like a quiet comfort space.”

She said she draws mostly on her iPad, but the young Hanson’s eyes sparkled when she spoke about alcohol markers.

“Oh! Those are really fun! They are full of color, and so much fun to draw with. You can blend with them, too. I use, like, all of them up.”

Hanson is currently studying art at TCC, but as far as her future is concerned, she said, “I don’t know for sure, just letting God handle that.

“I think art definitely runs in our family, especially my mom’s side, and then my younger siblings, they like to draw a lot too, so it’s kind of just in our blood.”