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The mountain of 5,657 stuffed animals in the gymnasium at Andover’s Shawsheen School was more than twice the height of a second grader: A 10-foot mound of Beanie Babies, teddy bears, smiley alligators, and puffy dogs. There was a child-sized Winnie the Pooh, a 4-foot penguin, a 5-foot Bugs Bunny, and a stuffed gorilla the size of, well, a gorilla.No, this was not some type of cathartic group therapy to help purge the tots of their attachment to stuffed toys. The elementary school collected the animals for charity and hoped in the process to set a new Guinness World Record. (The “largest gathering of plush toys” is a real category tracked by the London-based chronicler of all that is inane.)
For 12 years the magnet school has run a stuffed animal drive with its pre-kindergarten through second graders. The toys are given to a program that pairs tutors from Phillips Academy and Andover High School with middle school students from Lawrence. The bounty of stuffed bears and mice is also shared with children in northern Belize at hospitals, libraries, and orphanages.
This year Shawsheen upped the ante after parent- and toy-drive organizer Rachel Combs saw that National Geographic KIDS Magazine had set a record by collecting 2,304 stuffed animals. Andover Police Chief Brian Pattullo and school committee member Deb Silberstein acted as official adjudicators and helped tally the 5,657 toys. The school more than doubled the current mark set in 2006, though it may take Guinness a few weeks to make it official.
The students learned of their feat at an assembly Monday when the cuddly creatures were piled so high they nearly touched the basketball rims in the gymnasium.
"It was like they won the lottery when we announced it," said Mary Kay Poe, an administrative assistant at the school. "They were screaming and yelling. It was hysterical."
Source : boston.com
