The Phantom Tollbooth

My Rating: ★★★★

Method of Reading: Personally owned paperback novel, 256 pages
Dates of Reading: August 12, 2013-August 16, 2013
Author: Norton Juster
Publication Year: 1961
Recommended to: Harry Potter, The Magic Treehouse Series, A Wrinkle in Time, and other youth fantasy novel fans.
Quotes: Just lots of funny, pretty writing.
Movie: Yeah, but not one anybody has ever heard of, and from way back in 1970.... Which is way sad, I could totally see this being a fantastic movie if somebody did it right! I've seen the play at a local theater--the book did not translate well to the stage. While the troupe I saw perform it was good, the script itself was weak and poorly organized.

Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Tollbooth
Link: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tollbooth/

My View: The manifesto of Juster's work seems to be this: "You must never feel badly about making mistakes... as long as you take the trouble to learn from them... [because] whatever we learn has a purpose" (233). The book is a twisting and fairly long journey (considering that it is a children's book) from ignorance to wisdom for bored young Milo, launching him into a world of excitement he never noticed he lived in. I like to reread this quick book every few years because it encapsulates a lot of what I wrote about a philosophy of mine, which I described in the post just previous to this one--learning is an ongoing process with immeasurable value. As this book constantly reminds readers, as I neglected to do in my post about being well-read, there are millions of ways to learn besides reading. Juster's book wisely points out over and over again that you can be smart with words (Azaz would love readers, authors, editors, and lyricists), with numbers (the Mathemagician surely has a special place in his heart for scientists and math teachers), with sounds (Music Theory peeps out there? Please apply to the Soundkeeper for summer employment), with systematic thought (my philosophy professors would get along well with the Princess of Pure Reason), or with any number of other specialties, and preferably with a combination of them all.
   I recall someone once saying that "...the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were 'impossible.'" As Juster echoes in Tollbooth, "...so many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible" (247).
   I'd like to close with the wise words recently delivered to us by the questionably qualified Christopher Ashton Kutcher... "The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart, thoughtful, and generous." Let's put that in a format that seven-year-olds reading Phantom Tollbooth could read: There's nothing more exciting than someone who uses his or her mind to create a marvelous world. Who would've thought that sentence that popped out of Kelso's mouth would have painted a thought shaped by Norton Juster in 1961?

Always,
Your Bibliomaniac

Bibliographic info:

• Ashton Kutcher Acceptance Speech - Teen Choice Awards 2013. Perf. Ashton Kutcher. YouTube. N.p., 12 Aug. 2013. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.
• Juster, Norton. "My Accidental Masterpiece." NPR. N.p., 25 Oct. 2011. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.
• Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Dell Yearling, 2001. Print.
• The Phantom Tollbooth cover. Digital image. The Literary Amnesiac. N.p., 29 Feb. 2012. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.
• "The Phantom Tollbooth (film)." Wikipedia. WikiMedia, Inc., n.d. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.
• "The Phantom Tollbooth." SparkNotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.
• "The Phantom Tollbooth." Wikipedia. WikiMedia, Inc., n.d. Web. 17 Aug. 2013.