Flat Stanley Sees the World

Flat Stanley was written in 1964 by Jeff Brown. The book tells the story of a young boy that has to adjust to a flattened state of being after a bulletin board falls on him. The book has been enjoyed by countless children ever since. The author even went on to write several other titles in the series: Stanley In Space, Stanley and the Magic Lamp, Invisible Stanley, Stanley's Christmas Adventure, and Stanley Flat Again. One of the projects associated with this title is to have students mail Flat Stanley to someone and ask them to show Flat Stanley around. Usually pictures or journal entries are mailed back to the student to show what Stanley experienced on his journey. EK's class recently participated in this very project.

When it comes to knowing people outside of Small Town, Texas, there are only a very few that we would feel comfortable asking to tackle this project and take a paper cut out around town while taking pictures of him visiting various tourist destinations or landmarks. When you consider those that live somewhere interesting, the list gets even shorter.

Fortunately we were able to send EK's Flat Stanley to two people. The Flat Stanley that EK originally made at school journeyed to San in New York, New York (1,324 miles one way). A scanned copy of Flat Stanley made a long voyage to Sharon in Singapore (approximately 9,727 miles by flight). Since the projects were mailed directly to school, we did not count on getting to see the artifacts from Stanley's trips until Open House. However, Singapore Stanley sent photos burned onto a CD. Modie picked up the CD today so that we could print a few pictures. There were 166 on the disc. Wow. Stanley, Sharon, and her students traveled a lot of places!

I asked Edie if she thought the other Stanleys from EK's classroom experienced such exotic locations. Now if only I could have found a way to make the trip with Stanley. I understand how Denyse feels. The paper doll gets to travel the globe and I am sitting here looking at photos from its vacation.

Wouldn't you know it! Stanley found a pirate. How appropriate. Thank you, Sharon and San. We look forward to seeing Stanley's adventures in NYC.