Our little girl is in third grade and I was more excited than anyone to discover she would be doing The Flat Stanley Project in social studies this year.  Based on the character of a children’s book entitled “Flat Stanley,” an educational project was started in 1995 by a third grade schoolteacher in Canada.  Designed to facilitate the reading and writing skills of elementary students, it also promoted interest in learning about other people and places.  This is the part I particularly love.  Each student created their own Flat Stanley at the beginning of this school year and the idea is he gets mailed around (yes, actual mail!) the city, state, country and (hopefully) world during his annual quest.  I think this is magical and I look forward to receiving notifications from where he has been.  So far this is my favorite pic of him, at my aunt-in-law’s house in Connecticut.  We learned that tree behind him and to the right is a Connecticut Champion Chinese Rain Tree; the largest in the state!  As a child who was unable to travel growing up, Flat Stanley would have been a dream come true for me — a way to see the world.  So far our Flat Stanley has checked out Chicago, gone hiking in Austin, visited Santa Fe, and has taken Manhattan.  Despite Covid he has still been allowed to travel.  It has also been very telling in where people have chosen to take him.  He has been to the library, sports stadiums, and the Brooklyn Bridge.  Jeff Brown, the author of Flat Stanley, said this:

You are here, now, because you have been loved forward.  If not by fellow humans, then surely by Grace itself.  That we are here means we are wanted here.  It means we belong here.  It is our life’s work to uncover why.  At the heart of this book is the belief that every individual came into this life with a sacred purpose at the core of their birth.  We are not random concentrations of stardust, nor are we accidental tourists.  We are divinely inspired, purposeful, and essential to this wondrous human tapestry.

How delightful that Flat Stanley can go anywhere and do anything!  It doesn’t mater how far or how great:  I think we should all aspire to be a little more inquisitive; a little more adventurous; a little more welcomed; a little more like Flat Stanley.