About.com Rating

Overview

The Phantom Tollbooth is a modern classic. With its fantasy adventure story, it's a book that can appeal to children ages 9 to 12. It will also appeal to older readers, because of its cleverness and subtlety, as well as its silliness through wordplay and puns. Fun and clever, this moralistic fairy tale is truly a children’s book for all ages.

The Phantom Tollbooth: The Story

The book is about Milo, a boy who basically spends his life bored.

Then, one day, he discovers a box in his apartment, with the instructions “[One Tollbooth:] Easily assembled at home, and for use by those who have never traveled in the lands beyond.” Immediately curious, Milo puts the tollbooth together, pays his fare, and heads off into a wild new country, Wisdom.
The first place he visits is the Doldrums, where he slows to a complete stop. It seems that you get there by not thinking, and as Milo is informed by Tock, the Watchdog who becomes Milo’s companion through these adventures, the only way to get out is by thinking.

Once out of the Doldrums, they head toward Wisdom’s main city, Dictionopolis. Once there, he meets the King Azaz, and learns of the history of Wisdom: how King Azaz and his brother, the Mathemagician, fought all the time; the only thing keeping them in check was the wisdom of their younger sisters, the princesses Rhyme and Reason.

Eventually, both King Azaz and the Mathemagician got tired of the princesses’ advice to compromise, and locked them in the Castle in the Air.

Since then, Wisdom has dissolved into a place where everything is right, but nothing makes sense. So, Milo volunteers – with Tock and the Humbug – to make the treacherous journey and rescue the princesses.

On his journey, he travels through Point of View; meets Chroma and conducts a sunrise; encounters Dr. Dischord and the awful Dynne; assists the people of the Valley of Sound get their sound back from the Soundkeeper; and jumps to Conclusions, before reaching the Number Mines and Infinity. From there, he traverses Ignorance, fighting off demons, before finally reaching the Castle in the Air and bringing the princesses back to rule over Wisdom.

Milo heads home, wondering how he’ll explain his absence to his parents, only to find out he hasn’t been gone an hour. The next day, he rushes home, anxious to go back and visit Wisdom, but finds that the tollbooth has been taken away, for “so many other boys and girls waiting to use it, too.” Milo is disappointed at first, but slowly realizes how much there is to experience in his own world.

About the Author and Illustrator

Published in 1961, The Phantom Tollbooth was Norton Juster's first novel. Since then, he has published a number of other children’s books, including The Dot and the Line and The Hello, Goodbye Window, a picture book illustrated by Chris Raschka, which won the Randolph Caldecott Medal in 2006. Juster also had his own architectural firm in western Massachusetts, and has worked on numerous projects, including the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Jule Feiffer is particularly well-known for his cartoons and is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. His clever black and white sketches add greatly to the fun in The Phantom Tollboooth. Feiffer is also known for his plays and screenplays. His children's books include: A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears, I Lost My Bear, Bark, George, George, and Meanwhile.... (Sources: Scholastic Bio: Norton Juster, Random House: The Phantom Tollbooth, HarperCollins: Jules Feiffer)

The Phantom Tollbooth: My Recommendation

I found The Phantom Tollbooth to be amazingly clever. However, because there is so much word play, although the publisher cites the target audience as 8 to 12 year olds, the older the reader is the more the reader will appreciate the book. It does work as a straight-forward fantasy adventure book, however, and is enjoyable on that level.
The Phantom Tollbooth is also an incredibly didactic morality tale. While this fact is obvious to the adult reader, it’s offset by the cleverness of the word play. While this is a classic, it is not for everyone. It seems to me that it will have a lot of appeal for kids (and adults) who already love reading and playing with language. For another perspective on this classic children's book, see the book review and quotations from The Phantom Tollbooth from the About.com Classic Literature Guide.