This summer, many families from Mountain View will travel across the country and around the world, and a select few will have a special, furry friend in tow.
The mascot for Landels Elementary School, a small stuffed animal named “Lanny the Lion,” became more than just a mascot last year. Through the creative thinking of Landels principal Phyllis DeMattos and Marti Wright, the grandmother of two Landels students, Lanny has traveled across the globe, visiting locations both commonplace and exotic.
The idea was simple: Let Landels families take Lanny on vacation with them, posing him in photographs in front of landmarks and cultural institutions. Later, Wright would compile the photos along with a story about Lanny’s travels, highlighting important facts about the country and culture, to be distributed in Landels classrooms and through e-mail.
“We hatched this idea as a way to involve the community and get all the kids to learn more about geography and culture,” said Wright. “He’s been all over the world now, and everybody wants to take him.”
To date, Lanny has been on trips to Japan, Mexico, France, Denmark and Australia, to name just a few. This summer alone, Lanny will travel with Landels families to London, the Hawaiian island of Maui, and Vancouver, B.C. He’s also taken more modest trips to places within the state, like Disneyland.
The Molander-Eckburg family is just days away from taking Lanny to Telluride, Colo. — their second family vacation with the little lion, who also traveled with them last year to Guatemala and Argentina.
Karin Molander, mother of Landels third grader Anders, said Lanny acts like a “cultural ambassador” for the elementary school.
“Lanny’s travels give children a sense of wonder about the world, the exotic places become that much closer to home,” she said. Additionally, she said, she watched her son “take on a sense of pride and responsibility” when he took Lanny along with them.
Teachers incorporate Lanny’s travels — which Wright presents as individual chapters told from Lanny’s point of view — into their curriculum as a way to talk about geography, history, culture, and to stimulate writing exercises for the children.
When student Isabella Wenneberg visited her father’s native country of Denmark earlier this year, her account of Lanny’s travels incorporated useful information about Denmark’s government and national flag, as well as historical facts about the Vikings and biographical information on storyteller Hans Christian Anderson, whose “Little Mermaid” tale is well-known to Landels children.
“I think Lanny has really increased an understanding of the eclectic cultural backgrounds of our community, and he’s made the study of geography so much more fun and personable,” Molander said.
Word of the stuffed lion’s travels has spread quickly, with many jumping onto the Lanny bandwagon. Mountain View Assemblywoman Sally Lieber brought Lanny to Sacramento with her, where he posed in front of the state Capitol building. Likewise, the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce, along with Mountain View Whisman Superintendent Maurice Ghysels, brought Lanny to Beijing, China, on a cultural exchange trip this past December.
Wright said an elementary school in Illinois with a family connection to Landels requested digital copies of Lanny’s travels, as did a school in Denmark, which hopes to create a similar project.
For her part, Wright will continue to put together the many chapters of Lanny’s adventures, and seems happy to have found a volunteer opportunity that puts her in close contact with her grandchildren’s school and serves an important educational purpose.
“It’s really worked. I never knew where it would go, but then it just kind of went,” she said.
E-mail Alexa Tondreau at atondreau@mv-voice.com
