"Stanley's Great Big Book of Adventure" is an episode special and the series finale of the Playhouse Disney TV series Stanley.
Overview[]
When Lionel accidentally falls into The Great Big Book of Everything, it’s up to Stanley and Dennis to get him back, while finding themselves getting lost in many different habitats. Meanwhile, Harry and Elsie are monitoring the situation, but accidentally tear the book apart, which causes both the pages and all the animals and habitats to get all mixed up and leave Stanley and Dennis trapped inside the book. So, with the help of Marci, Mimi and Lester, Harry and Elsie must get all the pages back together in the right order in order to save their friends.
Plot[]
Stanley is busy cleaning out Dennis’s bowl when his friends Marci, Mimi and Lester arrive. The kids decide to go out and play while Stanley’s mom finishes cleaning the bowl, while Dennis is in an empty mayonnaise jar (much to his dismay). Out in the backyard, Stanley’s brother, Lionel is trying to write a song when the kids come out, playing a game of Follow the Monkey. The noise starts to annoy Lionel, so he goes to work on his song in the kitchen. Unfortunately, he gets distracted by the kids playing Follow the Chicken and making more noise. Finally, he tries to get some peace and quiet in his room, but gets interrupted once again by the kids playing Follow the Elephant in the hallway. Getting fed up, he goes to confront Stanley and his friends saying that he’s trying to write a great song, but keeps getting interrupted by the kids making so much noise. After he slams the door, Stanley feels upset, thinking Lionel never wants to play with him. The twins think that maybe it’s because they both like different things, just as Marci and Mimi do. But they get along well because they each do things the other one likes. Stanley then gets an idea: to help Lionel finish his new song.
In his room, Stanley tries to think of ways to help Lionel. Harry suggests he uses instruments like either a guitar, a drum or a kazoo. Elsie then suggests that he get help from an animal. Dennis says there’s many musical animals in the world, including whales, monkeys, wolves and especially the kōkako, a musical bird from New Zealand. Stanley then looks up a kōkako bird from the Great Big Book of Everything to learn more. Inside the book, Stanley and Dennis find the bird and Stanley takes it back home to show Lionel. He goes in his room to find that Lionel is not there, but his song is on the bed. Stanley decides to surprise his brother by finishing his song for him, but Dennis is rather hesitant of the idea. He tries to get the kōkako to sing, but the bird takes the song away. Stanley and Dennis follow it just as Lionel comes back. Not being pleased, Lionel orders Stanley to get the song back. He follows the bird back into the book to get it back. Unfortunately, they are only able to retrieve half of the song. Lionel searches for Stanley in his room, not noticing him coming out of the book. When he gives Lionel back the song, he becomes very upset to find it’s only half a page. Stanley tries to explain what happened, but Lionel doesn’t believe him and takes the Great Big Book of Everything. Stanley chases after him, but Lionel refuses to give him back the book, thus making Stanley very upset.
Back in his room, Lionel complains how he never has any peace, especially with Stanley being a pain in the neck. While looking at the Great Big Book of Everything, Lionel sees a page about the Arctic and (seeing the place as the perfect place to write a song without noise, bothers, and brothers) wished he could live there, causing the book to transport him there. Meanwhile, Stanley goes downstairs to talk to his parents. He thinks that Lionel doesn’t like him because he thinks he’s a bother, even when he’s trying to help. Stanley’s mom and dad assure him that’s not the case, saying that brothers (and siblings in general) may argue sometimes and get on each other’s nerves, but still care for each other. They suggest that Stanley should go talk to Lionel to see if they can work things out. Stanley goes up to Lionel’s room but doesn’t seem to find him anywhere. He then notices the book was opened on the floor. When he spots Lionel’s headphones on one of the pages, Stanley realizes that Lionel must’ve fell into the book. He takes the book back to his room to show his pets what happened. In an effort to get him back, Dennis then suggests they organize a search party to find Lionel. So he and Stanley decide to go into the book and search while Harry and Elsie stay behind, using a couple of walkie-talkies called Stan-O-Phones so they can communicate with one another.
Stanley and Dennis start out in the Arctic and try to find Lionel. Meanwhile, Lionel thinks he’s simply dreaming and is enjoying himself, especially when there’s no little bothers and no little brothers. Stanley starts to get worried, but Dennis assures him that they will find Lionel, wherever he may be. While in the Arctic, Stanley has a hard time finding his brother, especially when glaciers are all white and look the same. So he tries to look at things from a different perspective, an animal’s perspective. The duo find a snowy owl, which have very good eyesight. The two fly up into the sky and find Lionel being chased around by a walrus. Back in Stanley’s room, Harry is eating and getting crumbs all over the book. As he tries to shake them off, he causes Lionel to fall into another page, landing him in a desert. Stanley gets worried again, but Dennis encourages him to keep trying. The two arrive in the desert, but find that snowy owl eyes aren’t very useful in the environment. So they decide to use another sense, this time being a jackrabbit with its long ears to listen. They suddenly hear the sound of drums, which happens to be Lionel banging on some tortoise shells.
Meanwhile, Harry and Elsie are still searching. Harry tries sniffing in the book, saying he has the scent from Lionel’s gym socks. The smell from the sock causes Elsie to sneeze and blow Lionel onto another page, this time landing him in a jungle. Stanley and Dennis follow him there, but find that the jackrabbit hearing doesn’t work well in the jungle because of all the noise. So Stanley has to figure out another animal sense, one that doesn’t need to use sight or hearing. He then gets an idea to be like a snake to feel for vibrations. But just as they get close, Harry spills water onto the book, causing a flood in the jungle. When Mrs. Griff comes to Stanley's room to check on him, Harry and Elsie try to hide the book, but they tear it in half and cause all the pages to fall out, thus resulting in Lionel and Stanley with Dennis swapping habitats again. Using the Stan-O-Phone, Stanley convinces his mom that he's working things out with Lionel, and after she was glad to hear this she tells him dinner starts in half an hour, causing the others to speed up their search. Stanley, who is now on a farm, suddenly sees an elephant, a camel, and a penguin in the exact same area. Stanley and Dennis find this to be very weird, since none of those animals belong on a farm. After learning this was because the pages fell out, Stanley and Dennis try to come out of the book to fix this, only to find that they're stuck due to the same condition.
At the same time, Lionel finds himself back in the Arctic, only this time with a herd of giraffes stampeding. Thinking it’s still a dream, Lionel decides he doesn’t like it anymore and wants to get out. Back on the farm, Stanley feels like it’s his fault that Lionel is lost and starts to give up. Dennis tries to cheer him up saying that he may be small, but he’s not alone, as he’s also got friends to help. So, Stanley tells Harry and Elsie to get Marci, Mimi and Lester to help out right away while he and Dennis continue to look for Lionel. Stanley’s friends arrive and are informed of what happened. Frightened by the news, the kids and pets try to figure out a way to get their friends back. Back on the farm, Stanley and Dennis find a rhino charging right towards them. Dennis realizes that the rhino charged because it’s not in its habitat, since animals can become really upset when they’re not in their normal habitat, just like Dennis when he’s not in his bowl. Now that the book is in pieces, all the animals are mixed up and might even be sad, scared, angry, confused and sick. Knowing this, the kids decide that the thing to do is put all the pages back in the correct order.
They start with putting the rhino back in the R section, which sends it back to the African savanna where they live. Stanley and Dennis follow it, hoping it could lead them to Lionel. What they did find however, was a puma (AKA a mountain lion). Luckily, Marci finds the puma page and puts it back in the P section, sending it back to the mountains. The book is now halfway finished, but Lionel is still missing. Back in the Arctic, Lionel meets the same kōkako bird that Stanley and Dennis met earlier, which brings him back his headphones. The bird then gives him the inspiration for his song, as he now sings about how he wants to go back home and that he misses everyone, including Stanley. Meanwhile, Stanley and Dennis find themselves in a forest with it being close to dinner time. They end up getting in more trouble as they start being chased by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Back in the bedroom, Lester has the dinosaur page, using it as napkin. Harry then takes the page and puts it back under section D. While still in the forest, Stanley and Dennis find a walrus, the same one they met earlier. With the forest being too warm for it, Stanley informs the crew to find the walrus page and put it back. Back with Lionel, the kōkako feels very homesick, just as Lionel does. The bird flies up to the top of a glacier, so Lionel climbs up to catch up with it, but finds himself getting stuck at the top as well.
The book is now close to being finished. Lester then finds the walrus page and sends it back to the Arctic, along with Stanley and Dennis. The kids then find a picture of Lionel on top of a glacier and inform Stanley of the news. Stanley catches up with him to the same glacier. At first, the two brothers are still upset at each other after the fight they had, but manage to patch things up, saying they missed each other. Stanley then climbs up the glacier to meet up with Lionel. Lionel seems rather impressed by how much Stanley has learned from animals, but becomes concerned when he notices that the kōkako is getting sick. Knowing this, Stanley gets in contact with Elsie and the others to see how the progress is going, which she replies that they still have a few more pages to go. At first, Lionel doesn’t believe that Elsie can talk since she’s a cat, but when he hears Dennis agreeing with him, he gets shocked that Dennis is able to talk as well. Hearing the three pets being able to talk, Lionel starts getting weirded out. The crew starts to look for the kōkako page and put it back in the K section of the book. This sends the kōkako, along with Stanley, Lionel and Dennis back to New Zealand, where Lionel also finds the other half of the song.
The book is nearly finished, and just when Stanley’s parents call him down for dinner. All that’s left is one more page: the zebra page. With not much time left, the gang puts the zebra page at the very end of the book, thus fixing it. With the book finally put back together, Stanley, Dennis and Lionel are now able to go home. Once they do, Lionel is still a bit confused by what happened. Lester nearly spills the beans, but Lionel just passes it off as a dream. Marci, Mimi and Lester all head home and Stanley heads downstairs to dinner. Just before Lionel leaves to do the same, he discusses what happened, with the animals, their habitats and Stanley’s fish being able to talk, to which Harry replies: ‘Sounds cool, dude.’ This surprises Lionel, leaving him to believe that maybe the whole adventure was real. When he asks Harry to talk again, the dog just gives a simple “ruff”. Lionel is left confused again, but decides to leave it alone and head down to dinner. With everything back to normal, and the brothers finally back together again, Lionel suggests they play a game of Follow the Chicken, to which the parents join in. Meanwhile, Dennis is finally back in his bowl, feeling relieved and replying: There’s no place like home.
Voice Cast[]
- Khylan Jones as Mimi and Marci
- David Landsberg as Dad
- Ariadne Meyers as Mom
- Rene Mujica as Harry
- Shawn Pyfrom as Lionel
- Philece Sampler as Lester
- Charles Shaughnessy as Dennis
- Jessica D. Stone as Stanley
- Hynden Walch as Elsie
Featured Animals[]
- Kōkako bird
- Walrus
- Snowy owl
- Jackrabbit
- Snake
- Elephant
- Camel
- Penguin
- Rhinoceros
- Puma
- Tyrannosaurus rex
Songs[]
- Adventure
- Friends
- I Wanna Go Home
Trivia[]
- The Great Big Book of Everything song is the only part of the show, the audio is almost taken from Up the Apple Tree.
- Morals:
- There’s no place like home.
- Even if siblings argue sometimes, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.
- As long as you have friends, you can get through anything.
Gallery[]
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