The Phantom Tollbooth

Author: Norton Juster
Genre: children's fiction
Publication info: Random House, 1961
Pages: 256

My sister basically told me I had to read this book. Frankly, I'm surprised I had gone this long without reading it. I remember hearing my sisters talking about it when we were kids, I remember watching an animated adaptation of it, and I remember looking at pictures from excerpts in the Childcraft books we always enjoyed at home. But for one reason or another, I had never read the actual book. Well, now I have, thanks to my sister's prodding.

Why did I wait so long? This book is a blast. I may have mentioned before that I enjoy offbeat fantasies—the sort of stories like Coraline and Everlost that have fantastical elements but don't really fit into the mainstream. The Phantom Tollbooth is one of those (but because of the nature of the category, it is still unique).

It's the story of a boy named Milo. He's a sad kid, though not so much sad as uninterested in life. Then a mysterious package arrives containing a kit for building a tollbooth. This tollbooth is a gateway to a strange land, a land where abstract ideas are literal. Milo travels through two rival kingdoms: first Dictionopolis, where people sell words in the marketplace and feast on half-baked ideas; then Digitopolis, where numbers are the commodity people work in mines for. The only hope for this land in chaos is to rescue the sisters Rhyme and Reason, and Milo resolves to do just that. But it's not going to be easy.

It's a funny little book (the half-baked ideas were one of my favorite parts) that will probably make you laugh, or at least chuckle. It's aimed at kids, but I think adults could enjoy it just as much. It will make you think about the way you think. True, it is strongly driven by a moral message, which can be annoying sometimes in literature, but the uniqueness of the idea makes that less of a problem.

I can't believe I missed out on this book all these years.