All of us have the capacity to bring joy to another person.  You don’t need to have a lot of money.  You don’t need social status or prestige.  You don’t even need a fixed address!  You just have to have your heart in the right place.  Because we have a heart for children and learning, we have offered to host Flat Stanleys for the children at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN while we’re on the road.  Here’s how it will work.  

First, the child reads “Flat Stanley” by Jeff Brown. (In the story a young boy is tragically flattened, but not killed in an accident.  He comes to realize that there are advantages to his new stature: the best one being that he can travel to far-off places in an envelope, which he does!)  After reading the story, the child makes their own flat traveler.  Their traveler then gets stuffed into an envelope and mailed to us!   We do our best to be excellent hosts – showing our guest around, taking pictures, and keeping a journal on our website describing our days together.  After a couple of weeks we send the traveler home, along with a copy of the journal and a souvenir from wherever we happen to have been.  We get to enjoy having “company” and the children at St. Jude get to travel vicariously through their travelers.  It’s fun for everyone!

Last year our family participated in the Original Flat Stanley Project started by Dale Hubert on flatstanley.com. It was a blast!  Our Flat Stanley traveled all over America and to some amazing foreign places, including Oman, Italy, Iraq and British Columbia!  If your school does not have a Flat Stanley exchange, ask your child’s teacher to check out Dale's site, which is set up to facilitate exchanges between schools all over the world.  It’s a great way to encourage reading, writing, and learning geography.  

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