Flat Stanley

For J.C. and Tony

First published in Great Britain 1968

by Methuen & Co. Ltd

Reissued 2012

by Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building

1 Nicholas Road

London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 1964 Jeff Brown

Illustrations copyright © 2012 by the Trust

u/w/o Richard C. Brown a/k/a/Jeff Brown

f/b/o Duncan Brown

First e-book edition 2013

This ebook edition first published 2014

ISBN 978 1 4052 0417 0

eISBN 978 1 4052 4940 9

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Dedication and Copyright

1 The Big Bulletin Board

2 Being Flat

3 Stanley the Kite

4 The Museum Thieves

5 Arthur’s Good Idea

Back Series Promotional Page

The Big Bulletin Board

Breakfast was ready.

‘I will go and wake the boys,’ Mrs Lambchop said to her husband, George Lambchop. Just then their younger son, Arthur, called from the bedroom he shared with his brother Stanley.

‘Hey! Come and look! Hey!’

Mr and Mrs Lambchop were both very much in favour of politeness and careful speech. ‘Hay is for horses, Arthur, not people,’ Mr Lambchop said as they entered the bedroom. ‘Try to remember that.’

‘Excuse me,’ Arthur said. ‘But look!’

He pointed to Stanley’s bed. Across it lay the enormous bulletin board that Mr Lambchop had given the boys a Christmas ago, so that they could pin up pictures and messages and maps. It had fallen, during the night, on top of Stanley.

But Stanley was not hurt. In fact he would still have been sleeping if he had not been woken by his brother’s shout.

‘What’s going on here?’ he called out cheerfully from beneath the enormous board.

Mr and Mrs Lambchop hurried to lift it from the bed.

‘Heavens!’ said Mrs Lambchop.

‘Gosh!’ said Arthur. ‘Stanley’s flat!’

‘As a pancake,’ said Mr Lambchop. ‘Darndest thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Let’s all have breakfast,’ Mrs Lambchop said. ‘Then Stanley and I will go and see Doctor Dan and hear what he has to say.’

The examination was almost over.

‘How do you feel?’ Doctor Dan asked. ‘Does it hurt very much?’

‘I felt sort of tickly for a while after I got up,’ Stanley Lambchop said, ‘but I feel fine now.’

‘Well, that’s mostly how it is with these cases,’ said Doctor Dan.

‘We’ll just have to keep an eye on this young fellow,’ he said when he had finished the examination. ‘Sometimes we doctors, despite all our years of training and experience, can only marvel at how little we really know.’

Mrs Lambchop said she thought that Stanley’s clothes would have to be altered by the tailor now, so Doctor Dan told his nurse to take Stanley’s measurements.

Mrs Lambchop wrote them down.

Stanley was four feet tall, about a foot wide, and half an inch thick.