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

I'm torn. Torn because I always find it hard to rate children's books and torn because while this started out SO WELL it got a little bit too nonsensical for my liking.

The Phantom Tollbooth starts out as a delightful cross between Dr. Suess and Lemony Snicket, but quickly makes its way towards Alice in Wonderland territory where all the characters speak in riddles and become increasingly maddening until nobody is making any sense at all and the idea of moving forward seems almost hopeless.

It's definitely a very clever book and the characters are very endearing (despite being so annoying), but the numerous puns and allegories become a bit tedious after a while, and I have to admit that when the journey was over I was probably just as exhausted as Milo.

I was really looking forward to finding out what all the hub-bub about this book was, sadly at the end of the day I mostly just found it "too clever" and didactic. Think Alice in Wonderland marries The Littlest Prince.

This seems like the kind of book that snooty parents would want their kids to read on the way to fencing lessons while chomping on their organic granola. Always hoping that their ever blossoming renaissance child will wow a crowd of adults with their clever anecdotes and mature vocabulary.

Personally, I believe kids should be selfish, obnoxious intrusions in our lives constantly on the verge of burning down the house while eating highly processed foods and stepping over their Archie comics collection.

(All afore mention opinions can be discounted by the fact that my younger brother loved this book and grew without snooty parents or fencing lessons. Additionaly my own son is currently listening to at least mildly enjoying this book - but still it's soooooo dang OBTUSELY CLEVER - bleh).

Okay, so . . . I'm just going to say this right off.

I LOVE THIS BOOK.

I can't promise that you'll love it, too. It's not one of those "classics" that practically everybody will love, or at least like--it's a strange, fanciful kind of tale, and I could definitely understand how many readers might find it confusing, disturbing, or just plain boring. But I read it when I was seven years old and absolutely adored it. And by that, I mean I loved it the way I haven't loved any other book before or since. This book is a part of me. I don't think I'd be the same person I am today without it.

If you know a kid who's smart but shy, who loves to read and loves to learn, and maybe feels a little "out of things" with their friends because of it--give them this book. You might just change their life.

And to anybody else who, like me, has read this book and been changed for the better by it, I'd like to say one thing:

"Many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow."

You're welcome.

“Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.”

The Phantom Tollbooth offers some genuinely funny and clever writing. With some very smart wordplay and life lessons in every chapter, the book feels like a delightful read.

Books only make me laugh when they are very silly. I have the impression that it's difficult to find them. The Phantom Tollbooth is one exception. I read it at the beginning of this year. It clearly was the craziest and funniest thing I've read in a while.

The style reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland: both books have a similar structure and use a lot of puns. Hearing this, one might thing that The Phantom Tollbooth is a copy of Alice. But even though there are similarities the two books a very different. I love them both and I think I can say that The Phantom Tollbooth is even a bit better than Alice.

By the way, on the cover you can see a watch-dog :)

My copy of this book is so old — there’s no bar code, and at the top it says 95¢. This is one of the books that my dad read to me when I was little. A lot of the puns went over my head, but I loved the world and the goofy characters, and I’d stare at the map for a long time. By now I’ve read it quite a few times but almost seem to notice something new.

The whole book is a play on words with lots of idioms expressed literally:

“I didn’t know that I was going to have to eat my words,” objected Milo.
“Of course, of course, everyone here does,” the king grunted. “You should have made a tastier speech.”

“How are you going to make it move? It doesn’t have a —”
“Be very quiet,” advised the duke, “for it goes without saying.”




There is still a plot, though, and a quest and dangerous demons and so on. The story is a celebration of knowledge and using information wisely. I don’t think the book translates well into other languages with all the plays on words. There are a number of idioms that have fallen out of use as well, sadly.

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What a delightful little book! Every chapter held something new to chuckle at, wonder at, and take to heart.

With a dash of "Alice in Wonderland," a generous helping of childhood whimsy, and a refreshing dose of common sense, Milo's journey through the Kingdom of Wisdom left me much to ponder. This is definitely a book I'll read to my future kids one day!

And that ending! Perfect. Satisfying. It stirred up that sense of having an immeasurable world of wonder at your fingertips. It makes me want to read, walk, learn, sit still, and discover all at once--and what could be better than that?

Many thanks to the dear friend who sent me this lovely birthday present! <3

This is so clever and so much fun to read. A delight for children *or adults* of all ages.

Reading "grown-up" literature is excavating the human soul, the adult soul: a mangled mess of contradictions and self-deceptions, screwy motives and the odd self-adherent logic of artistic creation. But Literature (capital ell) is a pyrrhic battle between message and evasion: one must avoid moralizing outright, must avoid overt allegory, but must never be too subtle, too veiled, lest you be resigned to snobby undergrabs and many rubbish bins. The Phantom Tollbooth is a strange beast: decidedly accessible to children, but remains lovable to adults. It's championing of the struggle against moral short-cuts, boredom, and mental waste is timeless, ageless, and remains prescient, even to me: a grown person 52 years after it's publication!

My grandmother has always said: "only boring people get bored" - I am guilty of sometimes serving this packaged wit cold when a friend laments "I'm bored!" but I think forcefully throwing this book at them would be a better remedy. What is signifed in my grandmother's aphorism is that interested people are interesting, and more importantly are never idle. My family (paternal side) is a hard-working, conservative, New Englander family: we don't watch much television, we read lots of books, we listen to NPR and read the Wall Street Journal, we somewhat self-indulgently talk about the cultural decline in literacy and how we are not a part of it. But the story of Milo is one which is both entertaining, lovable, but also cautionary. By no means is Milo a bad child, a dull idler, but rather he has not found passion yet. He is bored because his urban living, his deadening routine has stayed access to the bliss of potentiality.

n  The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.n

We are plagued, as a modern, urban society by the two-headed monster of routine. Routine comforts us, it gives us an escape into the dull and Terrible Trivium: the small tasks which comfort us and distract us from important, difficult work and choices. Our society is filled with spineless and indecisive people (the Gelatinous Giant) and those who feed us half-truths, who coddle us into a mire, into a trap (Monster of Insincerity): they are not villains, and these flaws do not define all people, but are characteristic in turn. Our weaknesses, our daemons, are our horrible defenses, our cozy citadels in the mountains of Ignorance. It is not the absence of bad habits (hours of dull television, bad reading or no reading) that marks an individual's decline, but rather the presence, the support, of our defenses. The demons of the mountains of Ignorance are impotent without our compliance, they feed on our weakness for what is easy. If we allow the glittering sovereigns of Rhyme and Reason to go fugitive in their empyrean prison, we lose our grip on true happiness, we become boring, we become easily bored.

Thankfully, there is nothing boring in The Phantom Tollbooth: its play with language is unrivaled certainly in children/young-adult literature, and rivals even the masters of play (Joyce, Nabokov, etc) in the grander schema. With a dual reverence for words and numbers, rhyme and reason, and a prevailing apotheosis of time, beyond the value of currency: something never to be wasted, Juster champions all forms of mental activity and cerebral play. I can imagine no better way to introduce a bored student, particularly one ahead of his class, to the ever-infinite vistas of imagination and invention than to hand him or her this book.

n  

“It has been a long trip," said Milo, climbing onto the couch where the princesses sat; "but we would have been here much sooner if I hadn't made so many mistakes. I'm afraid it's all my fault."

"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.”

n

I can't believe I didn't read this sooner! I have the feeling this would have been a childhood favorite.

It's got that classic, cozy feeling of books from another age, yet it still applies so well to the present. All the whimsical humor and deep truths herald back to another favorite classic of mine, Alice in Wonderland.

It's a story packed full of great messages. The fun characters, vibrant setting, sharp wit, and charming illustrations make this a classic for a reason.

What else can I say about this? Oh yes...WHEN CAN I REREAD IT??

5 stars!

A story based on puns and word play; about learning, noticing, and that wasting time is a waste of time. Very creative and imaginative, with lots of tongue-in-cheek potshots at some of the demons of existance: ignorance, boredom, misdirection… I have listened, which was a good medium for the story, but I would need to get a print copy for the quotes. The story is without Rhyme and Reason, quite literally, at least up until the end. Rhyme and Reason are princesses - which is how the story is made, making phrases literal… and Milo needs to get Rhyme and Reason back so Wisdom can once again flourish (wisdom is the kimgdom). This jumping around can get confusing, especially to conclusions.

The book is delightfully freewheeling, and even has a message: stop wasting time and start learning things, because ignorance is evil. I can get behind that.