Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the BookChor database with this name.

Jeff Brown had worked in Hollywood and as an editor and writer in New York before creating Flat Stanley, a hero for the youngest readers whose adventures, with illustrations by Tomi Ungerer, were first published in 1964. Flat Stanley became the star of a series of perpetually popular books. The last, Stanley, Flat Again!, was published the year he died. All together, Stanleys tales have sold nearly a million copies in the United States alone. The characters life extended further, as schoolchildren mailed cut-outs of him to their friends. In translation, he traveled to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and Israel, among other places.

Jeff Brown was born Richard Chester Brown. Originally a child actor, he became Jeff Brown because Actors Equity already had a Richard Brown as a member. A graduate of the Professional Childrens School, he provided a childs voice in a radio drama and appeared onstage.

In Hollywood he worked for the producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and was a story consultant at Paramount. Preferring to write himself, he sold fiction and articles to national magazines while working at The New Yorker, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire and finally at Warner Books, where he was a senior editor until 1980. The idea for Stanley came to him one night at bedtime when his sons J. C. and Tony were young and stalling for time. One asked what would happen if the big bulletin board on the wall were to fall on J. C., and Mr. Brown said he would most likely wake up flat. That led to speculation about what such a life might be like. After writing Flat Stanley, Mr. Brown went on to Stanley and the Magic Lamp, Stanley in Space, Stanleys Christmas Adventure, Invisible Stanley and finally Stanley, Flat Again!

The Flat Stanley Project was started in 1995 by Dale Hubert, a third grade schoolteacher in London, Ontario, Canada. It is meant to facilitaRead Less