Flat Stanley

My name is Flat Stanley. My goal in life is to travel the world, meeting people, going to places, eating local foods, learning new languages. I would like to visit all seven continents.

Please don't just take me from cache to cache. Write tell me about where you went, what you saw, who you met and where you went. Please take a picture of me at the places you take me to.

Flat Stanley is a 1964 children's book written by Jeff Brown and originally illustrated by Tomi Ungerer. It is the first in a series of books featuring Stanley Lambchop.

Stanley Lambchop and his younger brother Arthur are given a big bulletin board by their father to display pictures and posters. He hangs it on the wall over Stanley's bed. During the night the board falls from the wall, flattening Stanley in his sleep. He survives and makes the best of his altered state, and soon he is entering locked rooms by sliding under the door, and playing with his younger brother by being used as a kite. One special advantage is that Flat Stanley can now visit his friends by being mailed in an envelope. Stanley even helps catch some art museum thieves by posing as a painting on the wall. Eventually, Stanley is tired of being flat and Arthur changes him back to his proper shape with a bicycle pump.

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The Flat Stanley Project was started in 1995 by Dale Hubert, a third grade schoolteacher in London, Ontario, Canada. It is meant to facilitate letter-writing by schoolchildren to each other as they document where Flat Stanley has accompanied them. Dale Hubert received the Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2001 for the Flat Stanley Project. 

The Project provides an opportunity for students to make connections with students of other member schools who have signed up with the project. Students begin by reading the book and becoming acquainted with the story. They create paper "Flat Stanleys" (representative drawings of the Stanley Lambchop character) and keep a journal for a few days, documenting the places and activities in which Flat Stanley is involved. Each student's Flat Stanley and its respective journal are mailed to other people who are asked to treat the figure as a visiting guest and add to his journal, then return them both after a period of time. The project has many similarities to the travelling gnome prank except, of course, for the Flat Stanley Project's focus on literacy.

By 2005, more than 6,500 classes from 48 countries took part in the Flat Stanley Project.