Late last year, children around the world were creating and preparing their maps for submission to the 20th annual Barbara Petchenik international map competition. We posted about the opportunity on this blog, and you heard us: Over 70 submissions were sent in from young students from the United States alone.

The first stage in the international competition was to select a series of finalist maps from the United States submissions to go on and compete at the international level. A panel of U.S.-based judges selected semi-finalists, and semi-finalist maps were on display at the 2013 American Association of Geographer’s annual meeting this past April in Los Angeles, California. At the conference, attendees viewed and voted on the impressive maps on their mobile phones, and six finalists were identified. Organizer Rob Esdall, a geographer and professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin, sent on the finalists to the International Cartographic Association (ICA), who is organizing the international competition. The maps will be on display alongside maps from 29 other countries this August at the International Cartographic Conference in Dresden, Germany where the winners will be selected.

See other entries from all participating countries here. And see finalists from the United States competition below.

The semi-annual map competition brings out the creativity from youth around the world, as young as 5 years old and up to 16 years old. This year’s theme, “My Place in Today’s World”, is timely considering the increasingly interconnected world in which we live. Creating, reading, and analyzing maps is a great way to understand this interconnectedness, so we encourage all of our 2013 entrants and blog readers to get mapping and explore our world through maps. Congratulations to all entrants of the 2013 map competition. We are inspired by you all!