After reading this book, I've decided that whosoever drilled it into our heads about puns being the basest form of humour can go screw himself. (no pun intended)

I came to this book as an adult, though I remember seeing it in many libraries over many years. It’s a portal story about a boy, Milo, when he’s feeling at loose ends. Then a tollbooth shows up in his room, granting him access to a silly, mixed up, other world with fantastically named people and creatures.
Norton Juster’s story has Milo experiencing the Doldrums, getting thrown into jail in a city by a short police officer named Shrift, encountering a boy who’s .58 of a person, and several other amazing incidents.
Milo’s accompanied by a wonderful dog who’s part clock, and has another companion, Humbug, who’s somewhat nervous, but does venture through many dangers and whimsical encounters with Milo, and together the three rescue the imprisoned princesses Rhyme and Reason after the two kings of Wisdom sent them away.
The wordplay is funny and clever, and I particularly loved how the author didn’t simplify or dumb down his text for his audience. There is also, through the names and satirical situations, a clever dialogue with his readers, asking them to not be complacent, to think critically and to reason.
While this wasn’t the transformative text for me that it was for other writers who provide their thoughts on this classic in the afterward in my copy of the book, it was a diverting and amusing read.

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.

This started out cute, but after the sixty-first figure of speech I couldn't take it anymore. It's as if a fourth grade teacher went on an acid trip and started spouting nonsense.
I'm sure if I'd read this book when I was eight I would've loved it. Now I'm twenty-eight and I couldn't stand the tedium. If I ever hear another pun or play on words, I think I'll vomit all over myself.

This was a joy to read again. It's amazing how much of this had faded from my memory since childhood.

Norton takes all these common phrases and ideas and puts them together in a way that makes them feel absurd. He remakes them. This is a great book for kids starting out their reading journey. It sparks the imagination about words. I loved the dictionopolis. That was amazing. Words are important and this book encourages a curiosity about language and words and how things can be used. It is a fun little middle grade read that I'm so glad is still around.

I did listen to this in the car on my way to school and I can't remember many of the wonderful quotes from characters I would love to put down here and comment on. Rhyme and Reason are important in this book and without them we do see what a mess the world can be.

I also enjoy how the Phantom Tollbooth just appears and disappears without ever explaining who are what sent it. It just is. I found that refreshing. This should be school reading or on a reading list at school.

This also reminds me so much of Alice and Wonderland and the absurdity of the characters we meet in this strange land. Milo is simply trying to figure things out. It's the closest thing to it that I know of. It is a sharp witted little story and it's easy to see how it came out of the 60s era. I had fun reading it.

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.

I wasn't as impressed with this book as many of my friends. Perhaps that is because of my high expectations for the book or perhaps because of my preferences in writing style. So those who love this book can use one of those two reasons to blow off my review. However, the fact remains that I was not very interested from page to page, and if not for a commitment to a book group, I am afraid I would not have had any desire to finish it.

In style the book seems to be written for a particular age group ranging from 8-11, depending on the vocabulary and maturity of the reader. And, for the preteen sense of humor, the wordplay was appropriate and would be quite funny to the intended audience. However, the wordplay was really the only interesting aspect to the book, and I'm tempted to say as much for the joke books my niece reads to me.

The plot was simple and was secondary to both the wordplay and the multiple morals of the story. In fact, a new moral was introduced with every chapter (some chapters containing more than one moral), and each chapter was only a few short pages long. This was the main drawback to the book. Not to say that morals aren't important in a work, but too many morals are detracting. Introducing, then immediately leaving a moral behind decreases the likeliness that it will be remembered once the book is finished.

My other main problem with the book was the lack of description to help the reader enjoy the fantastical and quite creative world Juster introduces. Here one moment, and there the next, the reader is left wondering...How did Milo find his car again (he was lost only a moment ago)? Where are they? What do they see? This book, whose main moral is to teach a child to notice the world around them, simply forgot to take a look around. (The spectacular scene with Chroma and his orchestra being the exception.)

Overall, an interesting book, leaps and bounds above the other children's literature of Juster's contemporaries, but not my favorite.

You can be mad at me for hating a classic, and you can disagree with me all you want, but this book is legitimate awful. I had to read it for school and it not only bored me half to death, but it has not plot whatsoever. The main character simply runs into countless characters, learns about their life story, and moves on. The descriptions and figurative language made it sound like the author was trying too hard to win a Newberry Award or something.
I can't even believe that this book is a "classic". That makes me want to scream! There is not a single thing I like about this book. It was a little bit creepy as well as boring. I was so annoyed by this book that after reading it, I promptly stuck it in my brother's room and advised him never to touch it unless it is forced upon him against his will. If you are looking for a fun, whimsical story, read The Lost Track of Time, by Paige Britt, and never ever lay a finger on The Phantom Tollbooth.

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.

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.

I am a reader, and I measure my life in books, and the ones that I read in my very early years were probably the most formative. You can learn a lot about a person by what their childhood was like- whether they played outside all the time or preferred to stay indoors, whether they read or didn't, whether they drew or played sports or learned instruments and languages.

I, for one, loved words. I read many books with large words in them, and so I was always asking my mother what they meant, or looking them up in the dictionary, or trying to just guess. I loved long words, short words, words that were fun to say. I would spell them, write them down, sometimes just say them aloud in strings of total gibberish. Even as a child, I remember being amazed that I could make sounds with my mouth that other people could recognise and understand. The idea that I could say the word "apple," which really is an odd word when you look at it long enough, and that somebody else would know exactly what I was referring to was thrilling.

I used to play a word association game I made up where I would think of a word, then think of a word associated with that word, then a word associated with that word, and on and on until I either tried to get back to the word I started with or tried to see how far I could deviate from my original word. So a game might start with the word "pencil" and go from there to "paper," "bag," "rag," "towel," "trowel," "garden," "green," "leaf," "tree," "wood," "paper." Or I might start with "pencil" and go to "lead," "bed," "jumping," "kangaroo," "pouch," "couch," "sofa," "soda," "bubbles." This all took place in my brain, and sometimes I'd just sit in my room for hours and do this. (I would be lying if I said I didn't still do it occasionally.)

I loved books, too. I loved the idea that somebody could put words down on paper and that I could create a world in my mind based off of those words. From a young age, I followed characters, tried to predict plots, and lived in that lovely world somewhere between reality and imagination that we call literature.

All of this boils down to the fact that, to me, language was a playground. I'd make up words, speak backwards, sometimes go whole stretches of time just spelling out words instead of speaking, like "H-E-L-L-O (space) M-O-M (comma) H-O-W (space) A-R-E (space) Y-O-U (space) D-O-I-N-G (question mark)?" Punctuation, spelling, even fonts and typeface and foreign languages- everything related to words was something I was fond of.

And it all started with The Phantom Tollbooth.

Well, not exactly. I'd been doing a lot of this stuff even before I read the book, but The Phantom Tollbooth really helped to make these qualities stick with me.

Why? Because I felt the way I do whenever I find a great book: that I'm not alone. Norton Juster, through wordplay and illustrations and wit, showed me that language, and, to an even greater extent, knowledge, was a wonderful thing. As I read this book and travelled among the Whether Man, Princess Rhyme and Princess Reason, the Mathemagician, and King Azaz the Unabridged, as I read riddles and jokes and equations and utter nonsense and wise advice and snatches of song, as I ventured with Milo and Tock into the Doldrums and the Lands Beyond, to Dictionopolis and Digitopolis and up over the Mountains of Ignorance, I recognised myself in all of these things, and each one of them told me that I wasn't weird for loving language and reading compulsively and making up words and collecting utterly useless facts. Or more accurately, they told me that I was weird- but that there aren't enough weird people in the world who commit themselves to these things, so it was okay.

You can learn a lot about a person based on the books on their bookshelf: whether they're pristine or worn, whether they're organised or not, whether they've got notes written in the margins or flowers pressed between the covers or the signatures of authors. And if you were to look at my pitifully small bookshelf (the rest of my books reside in two enormous stacks by my bed), you would find a worn, torn, stained, and utterly beloved copy of The Phantom Tollbooth. And perhaps you would be able to tell, just by looking at it, that it taught me one of the most important lessons I've learned: that imagination is a beautiful thing, and even if you think that you're too old for things like word games and math equations and fun facts and puns and stories- things, in short, that bring you knowledge and delight, even if you think you've outgrown them... Deep down, they will never outgrow you.

After the first 50 pages I know this will be on my bedside table for the rest of my life!