Rereading: THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster

A favorite of my childhood and I enjoyed rereading it the past two weeks, a chapter a day. The illustrations by Jules Feiffer are excellent, too.

Milo is a boy who doesn’t know what to do with himself, or how to use his free time. One day a large package appears in his room with instructions on how to assemble the contents: a small tollbooth along with coins and a map. Milo does this, and he has a small electric car that can drive up to it so he can deposit coins. As he rolls past, he’s suddenly in on a road in a different place, and off on an amazing adventure in a magical land.

It’s hard to pin down the charm of the setting and characters, but they are full of wordplay. Milo first meets the Whether Man of Expectations, then he and his car become lost in The Doldrums, where Milo is rescued by a large WatchDog named Tock (see image above). Among the many amusing and sometimes scary places he visits are Dictionopolis, where words are bought and sold, the Forest of Sight, the Valley of Sound, and Digitopolis, city of numbers. Milo and Tock meet many strange characters, and are later joined by a Humbug. This land is full of troubles, and the only thing that will save it is the return of the twin princesses Rhyme and Reason, but they are captives in a Castle in the Air beyond the Mountains of Ignorance, which is full of monsters and demons. Despite that, Milo, Tock, and the Humbug agree to try their best to rescue the princesses and return joy to the land.

Great fun, and perhaps the cleverest use of words and ideas in a story since Alice in Wonderland. Highly recommended.

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