'I've Never Broken a World Record'
Chicago Kids Join 547,000 in Reading 'Charlotte's Web' at the Same TimeDecember 14, 2006
By SHAMUS TOOMEY
Chicago Sun Times
"Salutations," hundreds of students at Portage Park Elementary chirped at the stroke of 11 Wednesday morning.
"Salu-what?" they continued, reading aloud a memorable passage from E.B. White's classic book Charlotte's Web.
The 750 blue-and-white uniform clad students sat in the school's hallways and read as part of an international effort to break the Guinness record for most people reading the same literature aloud at the same time in multiple locations.
'It's very exciting'
It's not exactly "tallest man in the world" or "world's longest fingernails," but for the kids involved, it was their chance to make a little history.
"It's very exciting," said Alexis Yup, 10, a fourth-grader in Beatrice Quatroke's homeroom. "It feels very weird. I've never broken a world record."
The paperwork still needs to be filed, but things are looking good for the record. Organizers reported that 547,826 students at 2,451 locations in 28 countries read the "Salutations" passage. That would smash the record of 155,528 kids in the United Kingdom reading William Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils" in 2004.
"They were excited about being part of the record breaking," Quatroke said. "They love the Guinness Book of World Records. I have that book in our classroom library, and there's always a waiting list." The mass reading was organized by Walden Media, one of the companies involved in the new live-action "Charlotte's Web" film, which is in theaters Friday.
Students from all 50 states participated, as did children in Australia, Haiti, Israel, Mexico and China, the company said.
With an 11 a.m. start time here, students on the other side of the world were likely far groggier than the students participating at schools around the Chicago area.
Growing ambition
At Portage Park, giddy anticipation quickly turned to a raucous din as Principal Mark Berman started the passage over the PA system. If Charlotte the spider were to spin a web to describe it, it might have read: "Some Racket."
For Alexis and his classmates, it was some morning. Now he can turn his attention to another record he said he might want to target: "Tallest man in the world."
stoomey@suntimes.com
