Kelty Blagg feels like she won the lottery.

The 8-year-old has been sending artwork and writings to Highlights magazine since her grandparents bought her a subscription three years ago. But she never had gotten a response.

That all changed back in October, when a letter arrived in Kelty’s mailbox from the beloved children’s publication informing the Quail Run third-grader that her illustration had been selected for the January issue.

“Me and my mom were like jumping up and down,” Kelty recalls. “I so much wanted to be in it. I kept trying and trying.”

The fruits of her labor – the magazine cover, the page with her drawing and that coveted acceptance letter – are framed and occupy prime real estate on the Blagg family’s dining room wall, where Kelty’s mother, Connie, proudly posted them.

“Every once in a while, these little things pop up to make your kid feel like the only kid in the world,” she says. “It’s always neat to have an event like this occur so that she can be reminded of how special she is.”

Readers can find Kelty’s work on page 16 in a feature called “You’re the Cartoonist.” She drew a picture to illustrate a caption supplied by the magazine: “Whoa! Look at that enormous hat!”

Kelty Blagg, 8, of Lawrence, has a comic/art submission featured in the January issue of Highlights magazine. Kelty's mom, pictured with her son Corbin, 2, framed the magazine cover, the page with Kelty's submission and her acceptance letter from Highlights and hung them in the family's dining room.

Rather than take an ordinary approach and draw a gigantic cap, Kelty created a beach scene in which a bikini-clad girl is checking out a surfer dude with a silly blond mohawk.

“I’ve never seen a guy with a mohawk on a beach, so I thought, why not?” Kelty explains. “Usually mohawks, if you get them wet, they go back to normal, so I thought, why would a guy with a mohawk want to go swimming?”

Her drawing caught the attention of Highlights editors, who describe Kelty’s submission and those of the other children on the page as “hilarious.”

“They made us laugh and laugh,” they wrote.

The minute Kelty and her mom found out that the magazine’s January issue had hit newsstands, they ran out and bought dozens of copies.

“We sent them to family members for the holidays so they’d have a chance to see our star,” says Connie Blagg, a sixth-grade teacher at Prairie Park School.

She read Highlights as a child, too, and tried just as persistently as her daughter to get published.

“I had submitted probably hundreds of things. You’d have to ask my mother because she sent them in,” Connie says, noting that she’s never known anyone else published in the magazine.

“And I know people send them in from all over the world because sometimes you’ll see them in there from, like, Nagoya, Japan. I’m thinking, my word, what’s the likelihood that something’s ever going to get selected? It’s like winning the lottery for kids.”

Highlights has been around since 1946, when Garry Cleveland Myers and his wife Caroline Clark Myers, who had experience teaching children and adults to read and write, put together the first issue in a two-room office over a car dealership in Honesdale, Pa. Although originally sold door-to-door, the magazine eventually became a staple of many doctors and dentists’ offices and now has a circulation of about 2 million.

The January 2007 issue of Highlights magazine features a cartoon drawn by Kelty Blagg, 8, of Lawrence.

Some of its original features – like “Hidden Pictures,” “Goofus and Gallant” and “The Timbertoes” – still anchor the magazine and remain as captivating to children today as they were to their parents and grandparents.

Kelty loves everything about the magazine, especially the craft projects. “I like to stay busy,” she says.

Despite having reached her goal of being published in Highlights, she plans to continue submitting items. She figures she has a pretty good chance at an encore.

“About 50/50,” she says.