Flat Stanley visits Idaho on his world travels

Ann Washington of Post Falls was delighted to receive a paper boy in the mail. He came with a letter from a second-grade class in Wisconsin, stating that his name is Flat Stanley, and he’s on an adventure to see the world.

Stanley had a journal with him that told of all the places he had been, and asked that he be treated as a guest. The letter encouraged Stanley’s hosts to take pictures of him in their town, and mail them back to the class with a letter. The hosts then contribute to the journal before sending him on to someone else. Ann and her husband, George (yes, it’s true – George Washington) invited Stanley into their home and treated him like family.

“We loved having Flat Stanley come to visit,” said Ann. “He was a very good houseguest, although I worried about him. He’s quite thin, and he ate very little.”

Flat Stanley is actually the character in a children’s book written by the late Jeff Brown, published in 1964. In the story, Stanley Lambchop is a normal boy until one night, while sleeping, a large bulletin board falls from his wall and flattens him. Now, only one-half inch thick, Stanley’s parents and younger brother, Arthur, try in vain to re-inflate him.

Stanley makes the best of his situation, but when he wants to visit his friend in California, the airfare is too much for his parents to afford. His father decides to put Stanley in a giant envelope and mail him to California.

Over 30 years later, the concept of mailing Stanley created an interesting idea for Dale Hubert, a third-grade teacher from London, Ontario.

“In 1995, I was teaching at a school that had almost 900 students, and only one computer that would go online using my dial-up modem,” Hubert said. “The school was paying $35 a month for the extra phone line, and they wanted me to come up something that was appropriate for the kids at the school to make use of it. I was going to be teaching grade three for the first time, and I wanted to come up with a way to make writing meaningful. I thought by using Flat Stanley as a vehicle for communication, that would solve a number of my problems. It would motivate my students to write, and make the school happy because we’d be using the Internet.”

Hubert built a Web site for his Flat Stanley Project and invited other classes to participate. The first year he had seven Canadian, and six American classrooms join in the Flat Stanley Project. But what started as a one-year project for his third-grade class exploded into an amazing phenomenon that was embraced by 47 countries and 6,000 classrooms last year alone. There are currently 12,000 teachers registered to participate on Hubert’s Web site. Stanley has orbited the Earth on several space shuttles and spent time with several presidents, and many celebrities.

“I got an e-mail from Colin Powell, who traveled with Flat Stanley,” Hubert said. “Clint Eastwood took him to the Academy Awards, and last month Arnold Schwarzenegger took his son’s Flat Stanley on the Jay Leno show. Arnold wants to pump him up, of course.”

Hubert receives thousands of amusing, and heartwarming stories about Stanley’s adventures. He was contacted by a man who went on a trip to the Alamo with Flat Stanley. The man wandered into a restricted area, and the security guard confiscated Stanley! Soon, the Alamo was once again under attack, bombarded with letters demanding they free Flat Stanley from the Alamo.

“I have 23 students in my second-grade class,” said Joann Gregor, a teacher from Ripon, Wis., participating in the Flat Stanley Project. “When a child hears from his Stanley, the entire class joins in the excitement. We read the correspondence, look at any pictures and mark our map to show where Stanley is. We’ve had a wonderful response from so many people. Some treat Stanley like a real person when they write. Toward the end of school, we’ll have a welcome home party for all the Stanleys that have been returned. “

An interview with Jeff Brown on the Teachers.Net Web site from almost a decade ago, tells where the inspiration for Flat Stanley came from. While telling his young boys goodnight, one of Brown’s sons tried to stall his father from leaving the room, telling him he was afraid the bulletin board would fall on him in the night. Teasing his son, Brown replied.

” ‘Of course, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll probably be flat,’ I said. Both boys thought that was a hoot, and many evenings after that one, we’d make up stories about the adventures you could have if you were flat. Best idea I ever had.”