For those of you who do not know about Flat Stanley it's a book by Jeff Brown (1964) about a boy who gets flattened by a bulletin board (but doesn't get hurt.. it's a children's story) which allows him to go on great adventures sliding under door cracks and the like. In 1995 the Flat Stanley Project was created by a teacher in Ontario by the name of Dale Hubert. The project encourages letter-writing, literacy and bringing our big world together by having school-aged children around age 8, color and send their Flat Stanley to someone in the world to learn about a new geographic location and community.
Originally the task was designated to our daughter, but the end of school year madness, school play and the like did not seem to lend itself to such an auspicious task. Enter yours truly who does not like to do things by half-measures. Flat Stanley became my shadow and he was tucked away with me at all times for chronicling his adventures. I was sad we didn't get a chance to visit San Francisco and take him to a baseball game, see the Golden Gate bridge or take his photo with other notable landmarks. Seems that our Flat Stanley brought a bit of Scotland's weather and our spring turned back to winter with big rainstorms precluding good photo-ops on his last weekend with us.
I was sad to package everything up and send Flat Stanley back to Scotland. He became part of our family. But all good things must come to an end and Dr. Seuss said "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened". So that is what I will do... look back at our fun times and smile.
Here is a little video tribute I put together of our time with Flat Stanley.
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