It was fun to read this again! I read this in school when I was younger and I remember it being different and unique. Now as an adult the plot was still enjoyable. The puns and word play kept the story moving. Milo traveled from one place to the next with colorful characters and situations. I would recommend this timeless classic to anyone. Young and old can appreciate the uniqueness of it all. Thanks!

Finished. Well, Juster is an interesting author and pokes fun at many things in our society which need to be poked. I appreciated the book much more this time, thanks to this annotated edition. When I tried to read The Phantom Tollbooth a few years back I didn’t get the humor and it was only that its reputation as a ‘classic’ made me give it another chance.

I figured it was too geeky for strait-laced me, or I was too dense, or serious or something, but I thought this (or a “The Phantom Tollbooth for Dummies” if one existed) might help. And it does. It’s an unwieldy read—square, large and heavy—but worth it as I’ve learned where the author was coming from on many (but not all) of his perspectives, characters and vignettes as well as the backstories on most of the illustrations. There is also some biographical information and photographs of both Norton Juster, the author and Jules Feiffer, the illustrator.

What initially put me off the book last time, the main character, Milo’s lack of interest in anything, was also what frustrated Juster enough to write the book and is resolved by the book’s end.

I still disagree (as I did during my first partial read) that all the world’s woes can be solved by the beautiful women, Rhyme and Reason—which is what Juster seems to imply. His blatant omission of God is grievous so I cannot give the book 5 stars, but I do appreciate many things the book points out about the problems in our world as well as the importance of the good things, such as Wisdom, reading, inventing, music, philosophy and the recognition that there is so much to see and do, no one should EVER be bored. However, we cannot overcome the demons Juster labels and describes so monstrously without Divine help.

Having spent much of this winter in less than wonderful health, I have been happily accepting donations of reading material from friends. One friend, on a lark, dropped off her copy of this old classic, which I last read probably at age 13 or so.

In re-reading it, I was reminded of the ambivalence I had about it on my first read back then. The level of cleverness is indeed impressive, at times dazzling, and for certain there are some fantastically humorous moments. It is also nice to read a morality tale with a message not of piety or "thou shalt nots," but rather of the fundamental importance of knowledge and openness to the lessons the world has to teach. At that, there is no doubt that this book has a beautiful heart, and I can hardly imagine any youth being anything but positively influenced by it.

That being said, more than once on this read, I was reminded of Edgar Allen Poe's famously ruthless critique of allegory as a literary style: "The best than can possibly be achieved is awakening in the reader a vague sense of being impressed by how well something was done that never should have been attempted in the first place." Certainly, there are times when Juster's allegorical style is strained and even forced to the point of being a tedious read. It is probably a price worth paying on a first read of the book for the many lovely things the story has to offer, but also a very good reason to read The Phantom Tollbooth only once in one's life.

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 :)


~-~

The Phantom Tollbooth is an essential classic for children and adults alike. An immensely clever and fun read, which was filled with wordplay. The entire story was like a huge, well-written pun. I absolutely loved every second of it.

I would like to thank my lovely book-twin, Celeste for introducing and gifting me with this wonderful book.

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
Milo is a boy bored by the world around him; every activity seems a waste of time. He arrives home from another boring day at school to find a mysterious package. ... The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's fantasy adventure novel written by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, published in 1961 by Random House (USA).

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1999 میلادی
عنوان: ب‍اج‍ه‌ ع‍وارض‌ ش‍ه‍ر خ‍ی‍ال‍ی‌؛ نویسنده: ن‍رت‍ن‌ (نورتون) ج‍اس‍ت‍ر؛ مت‍رج‍م: ش‍ه‍لا طه‍م‍اس‍ب‍ی‌؛ ن‍ق‍اش‍ی‌: ج‍ول‍ز ف‍ی‍ف‍ر؛ ت‍ه‍ران‌: ن‍ش‍ر چ‍ش‍م‍ه‌، ک‍ت‍اب‌ ون‍وش‍ه‌، 1377؛ در 248 ص؛ شابک: 9646194699؛ موضوع: داستانهای نوجوانان از نویندگان ایالات متحده امریکا - سده 20 م

میلو، پسری بی حوصله و افسرده است که بسیاری از کارهایش، همانند مدرسه رفتن، انجام تکالیف و نظایر آن را بیهوده می‌پندارد. او یک روز هنگامی که وارد اتاقش شد بسته مرموزی دید که... ا. شربیانی

First read in 2003: This book knocked my socks off!

I didn't read it as a child, and for years my son has been recommending it to me.

Incredibly fun read. Highly recommended.


January 2011: A reread, a happy reread. You must bear in mind that I adore silly wordplay and this book is the King of Silly Wordplay.

An old favorite that hasn’t aged as well as I’d expected. The highlights were still pretty good, and my kid liked it and was excited to read it at night.

I read it out loud to my kid and found the story to be remarkably episodic and random. A lot of the language was clunky with a bad rhythm that made me tired. I also didn’t remember it being so much in the fairy tale genre, but it is, largely, using fairy tale logic of gifts and rules of 3 and things like that.

That said, it plays lots of fun word games (too tricky for my kid, but I liked them) and has some memorable classic monsters and magical happenings.

Norton Juster lived around the block from me when I was a kid. We all steered clear of his house because our parents told us he was a miserable bastard.

That's not true; when I asked my mom about it last year she was horrified. She said he was a really nice man and she has no idea where I got that terrible but clear memory.

Anyway, I read this like fifty times when I was a kid and is there an Italo Calvino fan in the world who didn't start with this, the child's introduction to metafiction?

I think this is the only school book I liked.

Puberty had just taken effect and so I was tripping my balls off on hormones: "My boobs hurt. There is blood on my panties. I hate everyone. Does that dog have a clock on it?"

This is an all-time favorite of mine.
My fifth-grade teacher, Miss Shannon, read it to the class chapter by chapter, and I was so absorbed in the story I cajoled my grandma into buying me a copy so I wouldn't have to wait for the next day's reading time. I recently re-read it with my kids and they loved it, too. The humor (downright Monty Python-esque in places) and vocabulary was a bit over their heads, but they still got into it. Seriously, what's not to love about a talking dodecahedron?
Highly recommended for adults and kids over perhaps age 8, or younger if you are reading it to them.

A true child of Lewis Carroll's Alice novels, with perhaps a bit of Bunyan ancestry as well. (Writing for The New Yorker, critic Emily Maxwell observed: "As Pilgrim’s Progress is concerned with the awakening of the sluggardly spirit, The Phantom Tollbooth is concerned with the awakening of the lazy mind.")

Adventures which rescue a child from boredom are a dime a dozen, but driving a story with astonishing wordplay and logical charm is really hard: almost nobody other than Juster and Carroll has managed it. Here, Juster sets an absurdly world-weary boy the task of reuniting a pair of sundered squabbling kingdoms - one devoted to math, the other to language - by rescuing the exiled princesses Rhyme and Reason. (It's pretty easy to read the math/language divide as primary-school stand-ins for the still-ongoing false dichotomy of "Humanities vs. STEM" education).

I would give The Phantom Tollbooth five stars - it's worth that, easily - except for a minor point: I don't understand Juster's inclusion of a dreadful demon of pointless, monotonous tasks named the Terrible Trivium. Trivium is shorthand for three of the seven core subjects in classical education theory: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. And the whole book is devoted, not merely to illustrating these subjects' importance, but to awakening incurious minds to the wonders of the world by making good use of them. In a book where the author is so careful about his symbolism and humorous details, this monster's name feels jarringly out of place.

But that's just one episode in a fantastic story. The writing is great, the illustrations fun, the story engaging enough to pull you along and make you laugh, and the themes are a positive influence on the world: pretty much perfect.