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.

they’re giving out bagfuls of pronouns to children in this. would recommend. i’ll take some to go.

I've always read ravenously, but when I was younger, I didn't really understand the idea of going out and trying to find good books to read. Instead, I'd read the handful of books I had over and over again. Not that I only had a handful. At the head of my bed, there was a compartment maybe two feet wide, one foot deep, and one and a half tall, which was always full of books.* I'd stuff it so tight some of the books would come out warped, and I vaguely remember once having trouble getting any of the books out, so snugly were they crammed. At any rate, these were the books I'd read over and over again.

I also didn't discriminate much as far as quality. Pretty much any book with lots of words was automatically good, fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, manuals for computer programs, I would seriously read anything that was in the house. (And yet I'd never read anything I was supposed to read for school, nor would I ever go to the public library, nor even Barnes and Noble, where my mother worked.)

Despite that, there were a couple books that were perennial favorites. This was one of them. I didn't really identify with Milo's nihilism, nor with Tock (although I do love automobile rides), nor with the ridiculous Humbug, but I did like them all to some degree. And some of the concepts - the dude who's the .58 in an American family's 2.58 kids, who is the only member of the family who can drive half a car; the guy who conducts the orchestra that creates color; the pleasant, urbane, demon with no face (The Terrible Trivium?) - just about short-circuited my ten-year-old brain. In a good way.

*Sometime around high school, most of that area was filled by a stereo. But I still managed to pack books in on top of it.

Wise and philosophical as most children's/middle school books are. It talks about the meaning of life, words, rhyme, and reason. It also talks of the importance of time. The plot isn't all that adventurous though but the illustrations added appeal to the story while the word play is fun.

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.

I remember our class starting this in 5th grade, but we never finished. Really clever and fun, especially considering the time it was published.

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

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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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.

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!

Apparently a classic in the US; I wanted to read it because I vaguely remembered snippets of it - I think I must have read it at a library or the like.

In the end, I could see why it might be loved by some children - those fascinated by language, in particular. And why, with its combination of whimsy and morality, it might be a subject of nostalgia among adults, even among those who may not have loved it as much as they remember in childhood.

Because I can also see why I didn't love it - why I vaguely remembered it, fondly, but never had my own copy, never even remembered the name or the author until my memory was jogged. An 'Alice' for the modern world, it's less strange and more superficial than Carroll's work: essentially it's a moral-political treatise (the modern non-spiritual world is filled with nonsense and chaos because we have lost our sense of Rhyme and Reason, which must be restored to bring about a spiritual reawakening of modern America, as we each improve ourselves, transforming ourselves into a heroic ideal of Manhood in much the same way that children themselves must grow up; also, it's all the fault of science and immigrants), liberally sweetened with continual puns. Some of them are quite clever puns, and the Moral Message is less aggressive and more heartwarmingly, platitudinously encouraging (and safely vague and non-specific) when taken over the course of a novel than when reduced in summary. But...

I'm not really sure who the book is for. Young children who are not obsessed with language will probably find the continual wordplay going over their head, and the Message a tad too subtle to spot. Adults who appreciate the Message and understand the jokes (if that's what we're to call them) are likely to be left unsatisfied by the superficiality, and lack of plot or pacing, and the lack even by the standards of children's novels of any sort of characterisation.

Apparently the book was written to appeal to nostalgia, and that might be its niche: those who want to immerse themselves in a nostalgic romance of Lost Childhood - particular those for whom that childhood once included this book. Perhaps it's a book that children are encouraged to read so that they can feel nostalgic about it later...


Slightly more extensive review over on my blog.

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.