A feast for the senses! In this epic journey a bored little boy by the name of Milo learns about imagination, using his time wisely, perspective, words, sounds, numbers, and how to avoid so many of the pitfalls of everyday life that keep people from valuing the world around them. This is a wonderful read aloud book with very expansive vocabulary. There is no dumbing down in this classic, younger readers might need a little help with vocabulary and themes. It would be a great selection for kids reading well above grade level, which can be a hard group to find books for. “… it's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters” – The Princesses of Rhyme and Reason. (AR book level is listed as 6.7)
– Alexis S.

Author Kevin Smokler in his Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School recommends The Phantom Tollbooth as a book for an adult to re-read. That’s a mistake.

The Phantom Tollbooth relates an allegory — a somewhat obvious one — on the importance of cherishing knowledge and of the equal importance of both reading and ’rithmetic. I never read the book as a child, but I imagine that an older elementary-school student or middle-schooler would appreciate the clever wordplay and the absurd situations of an Alice in Wonderland variety. However, the book simply doesn’t stand up to an adult reading in the way that Alice in Wonderland does.

While The Phantom Tollbooth probably rates five stars for fifth-graders, adults will find the novel preachy and egregious; they will be hard-pressed to get through the novel at all. In consideration, I’ve awarded the book three stars as an average between the rating for each age group.

In most of the libraries I frequent the children's audio book selection is pretty minimal. That makes it rather exciting to visit the day before a road trip, to try to find something that might suit both a 1st grader and his mother -- one is forced to make a choice one might have not otherwise, and who knows if it will prove to be a delight - or not. In this case, I thought, everyone else in the world has read The Phantom Tollbooth, we might as well give it a shot.

Apologies to those who love this book but I found the relentless wordplay really tedious. I guess 40 is just not the right age to appreciate an endless stream of puns and forced absurdity. The six year-old liked it however, and didn't seem to find it grating that the narrator of this recording really went overboard with doing the voices.

Hopefully I'll be luckier on our next road trip.

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this was another one of those absurd, witty books that i like reading so much. it was a bit simple and childish but i enjoyed it.

the world was so unique and interesting and i’d recommend it to fans of lemony snicket and roald dahl.


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This book is so awesome, and now it is a top favorite for both me and my daughter. I would never imagine that anyone can take such abstract concepts and make them so vivid, bring them to life, draw them as physical objects. Amazing!
In addition, the book brings so many insights, that I ended up highlighting so many sentences in my e-book, maybe the most that I ever found in a single book. Just go and read it no matter your age.

The world is such a magical place, and Milo, that does not know it yet, because he is a very bored child, is going on a extremely amazing journey, taking the reader with him. How do you imagine Infinity to look like? Or how does the sunrise gets its color? How can the average family have 2.58 children? And can you vision sounds or terrible noises or a mine of numbers or a market of words?Norton Juster is a genius, there are no other words to describe this book.

In Digitopolis, Milo learns about words. That one should not use a lot to say a little, that you can get in a lot of trouble mixing up words or just not knowing how to spell them. And that words can taste really good.
Words are powerful, and most of our knowledge can be captured by words if you just know how to use them well: In this box are all the words I know,” he said. “Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is use them well and in the right places.

Next he learns about many abstract concepts, from the fact that people have different Points of View, or that the same person can have them when they are changing. And in general how to look at things: Things which are equally bad are equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things.
Milo also sees Illusions from afar, and learn that they can be more vivid than reality. “Illusions are like mirages, things that aren’t really there that you can see very clearly". “How can you see something that isn’t there?” “Sometimes it’s much simpler than seeing things that are,” he said. “For instance, 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.” There is much to see, if you keep your eyes open, and much worth noticing that often escapes the eye. Another thing that Milo learns, is about seeing things as they really are, not just as they seem to be. Everybody needs a reminder about that once in a while.
Then Milo and his friends jump to Conclusions. A place that looks much better from a distance. He finds out that you can lose too much time jumping to Conclusions, because the way back is much longer.

And from Rhyme and Reason they learn about the impossible, a word that we tend to use way too easily: so many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible. And not being afraid of making mistakes: “You must never feel badly about making mistakes,” explained Reason quietly, “as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.” And that trying is really the most important thing and the first step before successfully doing: “but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

We laughed when we found out that you can grow down (instead of up), we feared from the demons of Ignorance, we hoped that Reason and Rhyme will be saved. We were totally invested in this journey, we cheered and we hoped, we feared and shrieked. We didn't want it to finish (couldn't we just keep going to infinity?). 5+ stars, for the best book, that is both educational and a huge amount of fun. Highly recommended for every age above 9.

n  “So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.”n

The more I thought about it, the more I felt three stars wasn't enough. *bangs four stars*

Plot
"This beloved story -first published more than fifty years ago- introduces readers to Milo and his adventures in the Lands Beyond.

For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason! Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams. . . ."

The plot was fun. It was fast paced and hooking. It was Narnia- just twisted. It also reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. It truly deserves the title of a classic!

Writing
I was hoping it wouldn't give me Narnia vibes. See, in Narnia, the entire thing seemed to be set in the late 1800s. Here, the plot, characters, etc seemed to be set in early 2000s while the writing, in the early 1900s. It was this that lowered a star. Other then that, it was quite good.

Characters
Milo, our protagonist, was not likable. But he wasn't exactly unlikable. Basically, he wasn't relatable and didn't make his way to me. I guess brushing him off like a fly would be best.

Tock definitely is the best character. He's lovable, helpful, and encouraging, just like any dog out there. (He's on the cover along with Milo, see it?)

The humbug was one of the silliest, most annoying but somehow still funny and loveable character. It just shows his character's unique.

The entire story was a fun read and totally reccomend to people who like classics :)


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An Entertainingly and Stimulatingly Didactic Allegory

A bored, disinterested boy comes home from school and finds a strange package containing some coins and rules, a map, and a Tollbooth. Soon Milo is driving through the Phantom Tollbooth and into the Lands Beyond, passing eagerly through Expectations and stopping dully in the Doldrums where, luckily, he meets Tock, the watchdog who hates wasting time (Tock’s body is a watch that goes “tick,” while his brother Tick’s body goes “tock”). In Dictionopolis, they meet the Humbug (who’s always the first to be wrong) and learn from the good “Which” Faintly Macabre that ever since the twin sisters Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason were banished to the Castle in the Sky by the feuding rulers of the city of words and its rival Digitopolis, everything in the land has been off kilter. Milo volunteers with Tock (and the reluctant Humbug) to go rescue Rhyme and Reason, an impossible quest because the Castle in the Sky is far away through difficult places like Reality (easily invisible) and Illusion (irresistably seductive), the Valley of Sound (strangely silent), Conclusions (easy to jump to, hard to leave), and the Foothills of Ignorance (populated by demons like Trivium, Senses Taker, and Insincerity), and he must make King Azaz the Unabridged of Dictionopolis and the Mathemagician of Digitopolis agree to permit the return of Rhyme and Reason, though the brothers never agree on anything, each thinking his own domain supreme.



Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) is, then, an allegory, not a Christian one like Pilgrim’s Progress but an allegory of thinking, learning, and observing, of being actively and thoughtfully and curiously alive in the world.

It has some points reminiscent of the Alice books of Lewis Carroll, in the language humor and imaginative fantasy, but Juster is much more allegorical and pedagogical. Juster’s reader learns to be more alert and aware and perceptive and curious about words and numbers and life generally, and his novel is more didactic (or pedagogic), Carroll’s more nonsensical. That said, both Carroll and Juster enjoy the workings of language and the use of logic (or illogic) to manipulate and understand the world and other people. Juster excels at writing language fantasy, making figures of speech and expressions literal, as when a character says of a car, “It goes without saying,” and the vehicle starts moving if nobody mentions it, or as when Milo requests a light meal, and he and his friends are served colored beams of light, or as when someone suggests that time flies and—You get the idea.

According to Juster, a bigger inspiration for his novel than the Alice books was his childhood reading of the Oz novels, apparent in the many outree figures met and left by the hero, though L. Frank Baum is less didactic.

One of my favorite moments in Juster’s novel is when Milo encounters the smallest giant in the world, the tallest midget, and fattest thin man, and the thinnest fat man, and they all look suspiciously the same, the point being “It's all in how you look at things.” One of the interesting things I learned from reading Leonard Marcus’ The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth is that during the writing of his novel, Juster and illustrator Jules Feiffer, who were friends living a floor apart in an apartment house in NYC, had a creative competition whereby Juster would write things in the story he thought Feiffer would never be able to illustrate (like this scene with the smallest giant and tallest midget, etc.), forcing Feiffer to rise to the challenge, as when in this case he just used the same illustration of the same man four times with different labels!



I also love the moment when Milo meets the .58 of a child belonging to the average family of 2.58 children (the boy is able to drive the three tenths of a car owned by his average family!).

Other neat points in the novel are when the Mathemagician turns Milo on to the interest of numbers—the biggest and longest numbers, the numbers of greatest or smallest magnitude, fractions, infinity, etc.—with the aid of his magic “wand,” a normal pencil, with which you can do anything you can think of.

Juster’s playful, entertaining, mind-opening didacticism appears in moments like when Milo learns that if you don’t pay attention to your surroundings, they’ll become invisible, or that if you accept the all the ugly sounds in a modern city, you’ll forget how pleasant ones sound or how appealing silence is.

And when the Soundkeeper gives Milo a list of all the different kinds of silence—

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? ... Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.”

And when the Mathemagician explains where they keep the tiniest number in the world,

“in a box that's so small you can't see it--and that's kept in a drawer that's so small you can't see it, in a dresser that's so small you can't see it, in a house that's so small you can't see it, on a street that's so small you can't see it, in a city that's so small you can't see it, which is part of a country that's so small you can't see it, in a world that's so small you can't see it... Then, of course, we keep the whole thing in another box that's so small you can't see it—”

Jules Feiffer’s hundred or so monochrome illustrations are sketchy, dynamic, playful, and perfectly collaborate with the text.



The audiobook reader David Hyde Pierce is fine. He does "British" accents for King Azaz and the Mathemagician, a French (?) accent for the the Dodecahedron, and an American accent for the narrator and Milo. He enhances the story.

I’ve read the book several times over the decades, and each time I feel a little bored at the start (not unlike Milo) and very stimulated by the end.

Hi, Norman, it’s 2018.... can I please go on a journey to find Rhyme and Reason?

Filled with puns, but not much structure and I didn't care much for it.

If you want a meandering story in a fantasy world, that also contains puns and if that's enough for you, go for it!

To each one's own.

Everyone should read, as a fan of puns & language I loved this as a kid & loved it more when I read it again a few months ago when I found it in a box of packed books.

It had been YEARS since I read this childhood favorite, and I had the pleasure of reading it aloud with my 6-year-old son. The Phantom Tollbooth is funny, clever, silly, and offers a lovely lesson about finding joy and curiosity in the world around you. (Or as my son said "I think Milo is going to like math now!) There is humor that will appeal to young children, and wordplay that might go over their heads but certainly gave me a chuckle.

This follows the story of Milo- a boy who never satisfied and thinks everything is boring. Until one day he comes home from school to a mysterious package holding a toy tollbooth. Riding past it in his little toy car, he is whisked away to a land where numbers are magic, a symphony plays color into the world, you can literally eat your words, feuding brothers disagree over the preeminence of words versus numbers, and only Milo can save the land by rescuing Rhyme and Reason, bringing them back to rule the city of Wisdom.

It manages to be both whimsical and subtly didactic in a way that left a lasting impression on me as a child, and seems to hold the same magic today. This is a great one for reading aloud with curious little ones who enjoy humor (you may have to point out some of the jokes!) and engage them in a sense of wonder.

Now this is my kind of children’s book! I just know my child self would have adored this unique story that is so reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland(which was my absolute favorite). It’s wonderfully abstract, plays with language and has the best coded message you could give a child. A true classic indeed.