This drawing by seven-year-old Colby Chipman has been attracting a lot of attention on the internet. A pencil sketch that was created last fall as a joke between an autistic child from Newfoundland and his mother over her kicking his toy penguin has turned into a web phenomenon, resulting in hundreds of dollars in novelty sales involving the drawing.

Seven-year-old Colby Chipman made the drawing back in October after he saw his mother Michelle kick the toy out of her way as she walked through their home in Paradise, just outside of St. John's.

"He said, 'Mommy, there's no kicking penguins!' she told CBC News.

Chipman said her son then raced into his room and emerged a few minutes later with a sheet of yellow paper that had a stick drawing of a person in a kicking motion standing near a penguin. There was a circle around the sketch and a diagonal line through it — the global sign for something that isn't permitted.

"He came back, taped it to the wall and said 'See Mommy, there's no kicking penguins,'" Chipman said.

Some family members had the drawing put on a T-shirt for Colby's mother as a birthday gift. That caught the attention of her brother, who was visiting Paradise from Chicago during Christmas. He liked it so much he scanned it into the computer so he could post it on the internet for others to see.

Chipman said the drawing went viral after it appeared on reddit.com, a social news website on which users can post links to content on the internet and make comments.

"A British researcher in Antarctica thought it was cool, printed it off and then started taking pictures of it near penguins and the ocean, and it's just gone global from there," she said.

The original drawing was done on a yellow piece of paper after Colby Chipman caught his mother kicking his toy penguin. Chipman said the drawing has attracted public and media interest from all over the world.

"It's just like a simple message that everyone can get, and they realize, you know, that it's a child who makes it and he has such an innocence about how he sees the world and everything, and I think everyone can relate to this innocence," she said.

Chipman decided to use the drawing's popularity as a fundraiser for autism research. She's created a website where people can read the story of how it all came about and buy different products, such as T-shirts, hats and cups, featuring the drawing.

The family has already sold more than 100 items, raising several hundred dollars.