JULY

as part of my personal reading challenges for 2017, once a month i will be revisiting a favorite book from when i was a little bitty karen and seeing if it holds up to my fond memories and determining if i can still enjoy it as an old and crotchety karen.

fingers crossed.

so: first things first. in answer to the question 'does this book hold up?' here’s what’s weird. i have no memory of reading this book as a kid. i know i read it - i remember all of jules feiffer’s illustrations and i have strong memories of taking it off the library shelves and adding it to my stack on a number of occasions, and i also remember it being read to me in elementary school in my AT program (that’s ‘academically talented,’ thank you very much). however, reading it for this project, it was completely unfamiliar to me - i had no nostalgic shiver of recognition, nor any anticipation of what was to come. the only explanation i have for this blank is that while reading this book as a child, i also witnessed an unspeakable crime, after which i was kidnapped and had my memory wiped, accounting both for the lack of memory and the simultaneously strong memory of borrowing it from the library multiple times.

which is fine - i have no interest in remembering unspeakable crimes, and the memory wipe allowed me to experience this book as though for the first time.

baby-karen review:





adult-review:

adults-only this time, i guess. this book is beyond delightful - silly, yes but also genuinely funny and smart. full of puns and paradoxes and wordplay and wonderland-logic, but more sophisticated and less loopy than wonderland - it’s a clever kind of humor that appeals to both kids and adults and also happens to be full of truths:

…you can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.

sure, there are lots of lessons, like the importance of choosing your words with precision, and the necessity of common sense and imagination in learning, as it contributes more lasting value than rote memorization, which is basically the point of this book - milo is a smart enough kid, but he is bored by school, because he has no framework for applying his learning:

”I can’t see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February.”

but once he passes through the magical phantom tollbooth, he begins to actually apply his brain and creativity towards problem-solving adventures both linguistic and numerical, meeting many crazy characters along the way, taking some on as traveling companions, like the wonderful watchdog. who is a dog and a watch at once.



like the watchdog, the lessons milo learns revolve around the ideas of what is possible - broadening his educational perspective, transcending the limited brainbox of formal education and embracing a less structured, more experiential approach to learning.

”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.”

this is one of those revelations that can change a person, and juster reinforces it in a number of ways:

”so many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”

which is a reasoning that brings to mind that alice in wonderland quote:

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

but it’s a different treatment - in alice, the tone is just a giggle; it’s silliness in a vacuum. juster’s take is more encouraging and ultimately more useful as a life lesson, fostering self-confidence:

”…you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

that is not to say that this is a through-and-through feel-good book. some of the realizations are very sobering slaps:

”But if all the roads arrive at the same place at the same time, then aren’t they all the right way?” asked Milo.

“Certainly not!” he shouted, glaring from his most upset face. “They’re all the wrong way. Just because you have a choice, it doesn’t mean that any of them has to be right.”

this is an amazing insight and i wish i DID remember this book from my childhood days, because lord knows it is a useful lesson and it’s one that many adults haven’t figured out.

of course, we’ve figured out some of the other lessons the hard way:

”You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”

indeed.

the last thing i want to call out is this illustration of the terrible trivium, which looks like nothing less than an early version of slender man:



the terrible trivium is just as insidious as slender man - he doesn’t make kids stab their friends, but as the demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit, he definitely brings his share of struggle to us all with his outlook:

”If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing…

which is interesting to me, because i encountered a similar philosophy recently in Arbitrary Stupid Goal, and when i read it there, i applauded it:

A goal that isn’t too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force. This driving force is a way to get around the fact that we will all die and there is no real point to life.

But with the ASG there is a point. It is not such an important point that you postpone joy to achieve it. It is just a decoy point that keeps you bobbing along, allowing you to find ecstasy in the small things, the unexpected, and the everyday.

What happens when you reach the stupid goal? Then what? You just find a new ASG.

i recognized and appreciated this way of thinking, completely forgotting about juster’s version of it until i sat down to write this review and noticed the parallel. which makes my theory about some sort of book-related memory wipe implanted by hypnotic suggestion in my formative years more or less fact.

so, if you haven’t read this one yet, or if you have had your own memory of having read it wiped, get on it. and if you have bred children, make them read it. and do not let them anywhere near unspeakable crimes. which should go without saying, but still.

JANUARY: wait till helen comes

FEBRUARY: the little gymnast

MARCH: zucchini

APRIL: something queer at the library

MAY: good-bye pink pig

JUNE: the girl with the silver eyes

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shark week was so much later this year than usual that it threw me off, so i'm reading this one just under the gun, and trying to finish two more shark books before the week of festivities ends. YEESH!

come to my blog!

I hated this when I was younger because I’ve never been one for fantasy. Now that I am older, I understand better what he was trying to do. It’s like Alive and Wonderland meets The Pilgrim’s Progress. Buster surely was a genius, creating characters for different phrases and attitudes that we have. However, I still am not on board with the whole fantasy aspect. Hence the 3 stars.

➳ 3 ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

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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Read several times when I was the age of the target audience. Love it and recommend it to everyone I know. Nowadays, maybe only 4.5 stars. But, yeah, one of my all-time favorites. And my son's.
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Another reread. Still getting more out of it. So full of word-play, satire, adventure... and despite being 'dense' like that it's an easy & fast read. My son saw me reading it and said 'hey, when you're done I want to read it again.' And he's 22 and in college.

Michael Chabon has written an introduction to a new edition of The Phantom Tollbooth, which is reprinted in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books (June 2011 - you'll need a subscription to read the whole thing), and which prompted a reread.

I will uncritically and unreservedly recommend this book to everyone. It's been my experience that while no singular author or book has ever consciously "blown my mind," many have done so unconsciously, including this one. How can you not love a world where you can only get to the island of Conclusions by jumping or where cars go without saying or where the Mathemagician transports our heroes to the Mountains of Ignorance by carrying the three?

Like Milo, I can easily fall into apathy and I like to think that my various enthusiasms were sparked by his example.

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.

oh man. it's like amelia badelia for halfway-grownups.

here's what i think of when i think of the phantom tollbooth:

-people trying (and failing) to feed themselves with five-foot long spoons
-people having to (but not wanting to) eat their words
-semi-philosophical ideas about time and being and the way people treat themselves and each other*


what a doozy of a book! is it enough to say that i la-la-love it? no? okay, well let me add this: i think you should read it. really.

and yes, i do mean YOU specifically. try it out and let me know what you think, please. happy reading!


*NOTE: the lazy philosopher inside me...(whom my 11th grade baruchians got to know well sometime during the outsider in america book groups unit (do you remember, 301 and 303? boal and howard s. becker and freire?))...anyway my lazy philosopher really just eats this book up, what with its silly notions and its serious (?) undertones. at least i think there were some serious undertones when i last read the phantom tollbooth (e.g. when i was 10).

so really please do try the book! and if you love it (or hate it) please let me know, because i'm debating how soon to start rereading it. thanks in advance and enjoy!


p.s. IMPORTANT ADDENDUM: i have to say that my memories of this book are rosier than my current experiences with it--i stopped about 100 pages in. but only because i was getting a little nonplussed (if one can "get nonplussed") about where it was going, and i figured i'd rather spend my energy on a book i was really motivated to finish.

but if i ever finish it, i'll add a p.p.s. to tell you all about how that went for me.

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.

Kind of a cross between Lewis Carroll and Terry Pratchett, this amusing child's fantasy is based on puns and figures of speech taken literally. The story is simplistic enough to amuse children but most of the humor would go right over most children's heads. It's fun for adults, too, as I've learned by re-reading it now. It's a true classic as it's just as entertaining and apt now as when it was written nearly 50 years ago.

When he left the Navy, Norton Juster began writing a non-fiction book about urban planning. As an outlet from the grueling work, though, he spent his free time concocting the imaginative scenes that later became The Phantom Tollbooth. One publisher’s advance later, he gave up on the scholarly work and finished The Phantom Tollbooth instead. And we’re all better off for it.

Part Alice in Wonderland, part secular Pilgrim’s Progress, The Phantom Tollbooth takes ten year-old Milo on a journey out of boredom and into a wild world of Watchdogs (dogs made from big watches), the Mathemagician (who rules over the city Digitopolis), King Azaz the Unabridged (who rules over Dictionopolis), and creatures like the Awful Dynne, who collects the noisy sounds of the world, and the Lethargarians, who sit around and do nothing all day.

It’s a bright adventure into the creative possibilities of the mind. In Dictionopolis and Digitopolis Milo discovers the value of words and numbers; on the Mountain of Ignorance he learns that knowledge can fight off inattention and indulgence; in the Doldrums, he avoids ennui by thinking; and through it all, he discovers that a little attention reveals wondrous details in everything around him. All told it’s an episodic allegory that feels like the whole wonder of grade school in a few hundred pages.

But the real pleasure of it is the whip-smart wordplay. We barely catch it as children, but Juster’s physical representations of intangible things—like the very short Officer Shrift, who arrests people without giving them a chance—introduce young readers to multiple layers of meaning. And as adults, there’s a laugh, a groan, or a tickled “huh!” in every paragraph.

The Phantom Tollbooth isn’t perfect, however. The opening chapters are electric with wit, but the mystery and momentum of the early pages fade into a string of sometimes cumbersomely connected scenes, as if Juster’s clever ideas were simply lined up in a row. And, not all puns are created equal. (Still, they're puns, and we have to love them).

But these are tiny complaints. Every child should read The Phantom Tollbooth; it’s a bit of a lesson book on how to live. In the interview at the end of the audiobook (read by David Hyde Pierce), Juster says that many of the demons in the story—like the terrible Trivium, who waylays us with inane tasks—reflect the challenges that he struggles with in his writing. And if we all do as well as Milo does, then we’ll surely live happier, fuller lives.

Do I recommend it? Yes. Read it at different times over the course of your life. You’ll notice different things.
Would I teach it? It would be fun. It’s young in spirit, and it might serve as fresh contrast to texts exploring allegory or the image of the road.
Lasting impressions: I first read The Phantom Tollbooth in the third grade, and though I only remembered excerpts from it before revisiting it recently, looking back at it now, I wonder if it was the most formative experience of my childhood.

Life works in such mysterious ways! There was this book that used to keep popping up as "Recommended for you" in my Amazon app. But as it was being advocated as a children's book (which I already own a ton of!) and it was a bit expensive, I was dilly-dallying about whether to buy it, in spite of the great reviews it had.

Just a few weeks of indecision later, I was conducting my usual inspection of the local secondhand bookshop and its treasures, when suddenly, my eyes landed on this very book that Amazon was convincing me to buy! Obviously, the price was just peanuts. So I just threw my uncertainty away and bought it.

Today, I am so tremendously happy that I followed my heart. Though "The Phantom Tollbooth" is a children's fantasy adventure novel, it is so fabulously written that every adult who is a child at heart will be able to enjoy this.

Choc-a-bloc with fantastically ridiculous characters & places with the silliest possible and yet totally apt names, the book keeps you on your toes, your mind constantly active looking for the myriad metaphors and subtle life lessons being imparted in so jesting a manner. The book is thoroughly humorous and very intelligently written; you keep admiring the author's imagination and grasp of the language.

Although the book would be a great read-aloud to children aged 8 and above, the vocabulary is really extensive, plus a lot of the intelligent humour would be lost on this age group. So I'd say, great independent read for ages 11 plus (with no upper age limit. Every logophile will love this book!)

Of course, the biggest joke was on me. I assumed this to be the work of a new author as I had heard neither of the book nor of the author, Norton Juster, prior to the Amazon push notification. Turns out that the book was first published in 1961! It's sad how some classics simply pass by you without your being aware of their existence.




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Illustrations by Jules Feiffer

From the book jacket - Through the Phantom Tollbooth lies a strange land and a series of even stranger adventures in which Milo meets some of the most logically illogical characters ever met on this side or that side of reality, including King Azaz the Unabridged, unhappy ruler of Dictionopolis; the Mathemagician; Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked Which; and the watchdog Tock, who ticks.

My Reactions
I’ve been hearing about this book forever, but never read it before. I’m so glad I finally got to it! It is an absolute delight. I love Milo – a boy “who didn’t know what to do with himself” – and his spirit of adventure. Boredom may have led him to the Doldrums, but his thinking brain gets him through the magical Kingdom of Wisdom, across the Valley of Sound, up the Mountains of Ignorance to the Castle in the Air, to rescue the imprisoned Princesses Rhyme and Reason and return them to the Kingdom.

What I find particularly delightful is the way Juster plays with words and ideas. Introducing readers (young and old) to some lofty ideas and imparting more than a little wisdom along the way. I kept jotting down quotable passages. For example:

”I never knew words could be so confusing,” Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog’s ear. “Only when you use a lot to say a little,” answered Tock.

“…that explains why today people use as many words as they can and think themselves very wise for doing so. For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often far worse to use too many.”

“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and [people] took great pleasure in doing just that. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went.”

“Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet.”

Children will enjoy the adventure and fantastical characters, and hardly notice how their vocabularies are expanding. Adults will enjoy it even more for the intelligent use of words. It’s been over fifty years since this book was first published, but I feel certain it will remain popular for at least another fifty years.


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Re-read 18July15 and found it just as delightful as the first time!