Review: The Phantom Tollbooth

Title:  The Phantom Tollbooth

Author:  Norton Juster

Illustrator:  Jules Feiffer

First published in 1961 by Random House.

Favorite Line:  So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.

Plot Summary:
Milo is a very bored young boy who goes home from school one day to find a box in his bedroom.  He follows the instructions and finds that he has created a tollbooth.  Using his electric car, he pays the toll, goes through the tollbooth and emerges in a different land.  There he meets Tock, a watchdog (literally, a dog with a watch) and they travel together to the kingdom of Dictionopolis.  There, they are sent on a mission to save the princesses Rhyme & Reason who are locked up in the Castle in the Air.  Accompanying them is the Humbug.

Milo, Tock and the Humbug set off on the adventure, jumping to Conclusions, doing Unimportant Tasks, visiting Digitopolis, seeing Illusions and  Reality, traveling through the Valley of Sound and confronting Ignorance in their quest to save the princesses.

This is the first book I remember reading on my own.  I remember picking it out at the bookstore and then being captivated by the story.  I must have been in second or third grade, and this book, maybe along with The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, really cemented in me a love of reading.  So when I was picking out books for the Flashback Challenge, this was the first one on my list.

I read it in one afternoon, and I am still in love with it.  In fact, I am possibly even more in love with it than I was in third grade as much more makes sense to me now than it probably did then.  Now I really understand the danger of Jumping to Conclusions.  I know how frightening the demon of the Overbearing Know-it-All is, or Threadbare Excuses and, of course, the Triple Demons of Compromise.  I probably didn't understand all those allegorical things then, but I did understand the wordplay.  The difference between witch and which.  The word play of eating your words, and the math involved in subtraction soup.  I ate that up, and I still do.  For example, here's an excerpt that really just shows how witty this book is:

"I didn't know I was going to have to eat my words," objected Milo.
"Of course, of course, everyone here does," the king grunted...
"Here, try some somersault," suggested the duke.  "It improves the flavor."
"Have a rigmarole," offered the count, passing the breadbasket.
"Or a ragamuffin," seconded the minister.
"Perhaps you'd care for a synonym bun," suggested the duke.
"Why not wait for your just desserts?" mumbled the earl indistinctly, his mouth full of food.
"How many times have I told you not to bite off more than you can chew?" snapped the undersecretary, patting the distressed earl on the back.
"In one ear and out the other," scolded the duke...

Absolutely wonderful.  The whole book is full of wordplay like that, making use of puns and double meanings, miscommunication and fabulous inferences.  And while it's written for children and I think children can understand the wordplay, the underlying story is more appreciated by adults.  It is all about the quest for knowledge and wisdom.  The book mentions how people ignore things of beauty and then beauty disappears.  It talks about important sounds like laughter and crying and chatter and clapping.  It discusses the importance of seeing reality and not being set off course by illusions.  "..if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed.  That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones."  It hits on the ever-important quest for a place you might never reach.  "...one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are."  It has really simple pen ink illustrations that show exactly what you imagine in your head.

I don't want to say any more because if you are one of those few people who have not yet read this book (Amanda, I am looking at you), then I don't want to ruin the first experience of it for you.  It's delightful.  It's witty and fun and so full of meaning.  I was worried I wouldn't enjoy it as much this time around as I did the first time around, but I still do.  I feel this is the sort of book you appreciate more as you age.  It's brilliant in its depiction of life and the important things in life, and I know that it's one that will always stay with me.  It is littered with so many memorable quotes and so many perfect scenes.  And more than anything, it exemplifies how much you can do with an imagination, and how important one is for a child.  I know the book had me in awe when I was younger, and I'm still in awe now.  Juster does so much with language- playing with it, teasing it and using it to hone his point.  I hope if you haven't read The Phantom Tollbooth, that you do.  And I hope that if you have read it already, that you pick it up again.  It's well worth the read!