Brown, Jeff 1926-2003

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BROWN, Jeff 1926-2003

PERSONAL: Born Richard Chester Brown, 1926, in New York, NY; died of a heart attack December 3, 2003, in New York, NY; married Alissa Littell Storrow (divorced); married Elisabeth Tobin Brown; children: (first marriage) Anthony, Jeffrey; (second marriage) Duncan. Education: Attended Professional Children's School.

CAREER: Writer, editor, and actor. Acted on Broadway and provided children's voices for radio shows; independent film producer and story consultant; staff writer for the New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Life; Warner Books, New York, NY, senior editor, until 1980.

WRITINGS:

Flat Stanley, illustrated by Tomi Ungerer, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1964, second edition illustrated by Steve Bjoerkman, HarperTrophy (New York, NY), 1996, new edition illustrated by Scott Nash, 2003.

A Lamp for the Lambchops, illustrated by Lynn Wheeling, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1983, published as Stanley and the Magic Lamp, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Invisible Stanley, illustrated by Steve Bjoerkman, HarperTrophy (New York, NY), 1996 new edition illustrated by Scott Nash, 2003.

Stanley's Christmas Adventure, illustrated by Scott Nash, HarperTrophy (New York, NY), 2003.

Stanley in Space, illustrated by Scott Nash, HarperTrophy (New York, NY)2003.

Stanley, Flat Again!, illustrated by Scott Nash, HarperTrophy (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of stories to Saturday Evening Post, New Yorker, and other magazines.

SIDELIGHTS: Jeff Brown suffered the fate of many other successful writers: his protagonist was far more popular than he himself was. As Julia Eccleshare noted in a Guardian obituary of Brown, the author's "was not a household name. But, around the world, and especially in the United States, his creation Flat Stanley is." At the time of Brown's death in 2003, his halfdozen titles featuring the boy who had been flattened by a bulletin board had sold a million copies worldwide and had inspired a pen pal program, the Flat Stanley Project, for schoolchildren to send cut-outs of the fictional character all around the world.

Brown had a busy and full career before turning to children's fiction. As a child growing up in New York, he went into show business, providing children's voices for radio programs and then acting in Broadway shows as a teenager. His acting career determined his name. Born Richard Chester Brown, he had to change it because there was already somebody by that name listed in the Actors Equity union. Thus he became Jeff Brown. After leaving school, he went to Los Angeles, where he worked as an assistant to Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., and became an independent producer and later a story consultant at a subsidiary of Paramount Studios. Soon he was also writing, returning to New York to become a staff writer for several prominent magazines. This in turn led to a career in magazine editing, and then to book editing, with Brown becoming senior editor at Warner Books before he retired from that position in 1980.

His character Flat Stanley was born one night when saying goodnight to his two sons. They were reluctant for him to leave, and one claimed that he was frightened that the bulletin board over his bed would fall on him in the night. Brown jokingly told the child—who was obviously playing for time—that he should not worry: he would not feel it fall, because if it did, it would do so too slowly for him to notice; and by the time he woke up in the morning he would be flat. The children found this humorous, and so Brown began making up stories about a flat child. Then a friend in the book business heard of the stories and thought they might make a good book. Flat Stanley was born, published in 1964 with illustrations by Tomi Ungerer. The book deals with the unique adventures of Stanley Lambchop, who becomes flattened by a bulletin board and has adventure after adventure because of his peculiar condition. Eccleshare noted that "though the adventures are in themselves pleasingly entertaining, it is Brown's dry handling of the concept that makes it so delicious. [Stanley] is the perfect all-American boy with charming manners and a regular smile, but with this one unusual feature: he is only half an inch thick." Eccleshare went on to note that "it is Mr. And Mrs. Lambchop's deadpan reaction to having a son who is flat that is so funny."

This dry humor slowly caught on with children. Nevertheless, Brown did not add a second installment to Flat Stanley's adventures for almost two decades. A sequel finally arrived with the publication of A Lamp for the Lambchops, which was later reissued as Stanley and the Magic Lamp. In this book Stanley undergoes misadventures with an apprentice genie. Stanley is not only thin, but also invisible in Invisible Stanley; further chapter books find Stanley delegated as ambassador to a distant planet in Stanley in Space, and attempting to get Santa back on the job in Stanley's Christmas Adventure.

The sixth installment of the "Flat Stanley" books, Stanley, Flat Again!, was published not long before Brown's death in 2003. Restored to somewhat normal condition by the ministrations of a bicycle pump, Stanley again goes flat when hit by a tennis ball by his brother Arthur. Bumping against a shelf, the air goes out of him, and not even the pump can save him now. He resolves to try living flat again, and has further adventures enhanced by his condition: he is a sail for a boat race in one adventure, and is able to rescue a schoolmate from a collapsed building in another. Booklist critic Kay Weisman noted that "short chapters and large print add to the book's appeal," while Debbie Stewart of School Library Journal commended the "upbeat tone set by the text."