Life of Bry

Originally Published: March 17, 2019

Jumping to Conclusions, fighting off Ignorance and reinstating Rhyme and Reason are more than just figures of speech in Norton Juster’s 1961 classic The Phantom Tollbooth. This witty children’s book, illustrated by Jules Feiffer, took me way too long to read (about a month) due to its wonderfully complex literary twists that are peculiarly unique to The Phantom Tollbooth. 

Juster wrote TPT after receiving a grant from the Ford Foundation to write a children’s novel about cities. However, Juster ironically procrastinated writing that book and instead began the journey of Milo and the Lands Beyond.

In a 2011 interview with The New Yorker, Juster said he was told that TPT would flop because the vocabulary was too difficult and the play on words would go over the young readers’ heads. However, The Phantom Tollbooth has sold over three million copies and has been adapted into a movie, opera and play.

TPT follows Milo — an ordinary boy bored of his ordinary life — when a mysterious tollbooth appears in his bedroom leading him to the Lands Beyond. Milo teams up with the loyal watchdog Tock and the pessimistic Humbug to bring Rhyme and Reason back to the Kingdom of Wisdom. From the Word Market in Dictionopolis to the number mines of Digitopolis to the pits of the Mountains of Ignorance, Milo discovers the value of learning.

While I originally read this book in middle school, I definitely enjoyed it more at 22 years old. Juster cleverly disguises life lessons through wildly crazy characters, but I can also see the puzzling literary concepts and philosophical looks hindering the ability of children to tackle The Phantom Tollbooth alone. 

The Good

We’ll start start with what I thought Juster did best.

First up is the book’s tone and overall voice. TPT is written in third-person omniscient, meaning that it has an all-knowing narrator on the outside. While we don’t get Milo’s perspective, the narrator gives readers an inside look at his thoughts feelings.

I’m usually all about first-person narratives, but the third-person perspective works wonders in this novel. This is mostly because Milo’s POV wouldn’t be the best way to present the story. Milo is young, and this journey is all about him discovering the process of learning. His perspective might be a little scatter-brained since so much is being thrown at his growing brain. 

Let’s face it, at the beginning of the novel, Milo doesn’t even know what day it is. On page 12 Milo says, “‘I don’t think it’s my birthday,’ he puzzled, ‘and Christmas must be months away …”. If this kid can’t even remember the two most important dates for children, what would his inner thoughts be like as he came face to face with the wacky creatures scattered throughout the Lands Beyond?

The third-person perspective also allows for Juster’s narrator to treat readers as equals. One of my biggest pet peeves is when adults talk down to children. Kids are smarter than they get credit for a lot of the time, so it was a relief that Juster was straight forward with his readers. For example, readers don’t get definitions or explanations for the odd word plays of characters. 

Milo’s encounter with Doctor Dischord and the awful Dynne could easily be ruined if Juster took the time to explain what dischord meant (according to Merriam-Webster dictionary it’s a combination of musical sounds that strikes the ear harshly). The definition takes readers out of this wildly imaginative world he created. Instead, the narrator gives enough details about the character to decipher the meaning behind its name. Doctor Dischord creates medicines that make terrible noises — good enough.

Another thing that was executed extremely well throughout TPT was the play on words theme which is what makes the novel so unique. Nearly everything in the book is an allegory, meaning that they have double meanings. The Everpresent Wordsnatcher is from a place called Context, but claims that he spends nearly all of his time out of it — the Wordsnatcher ‘snatches’ people’s words and takes them out of context. 

These plays on words are scattered throughout the book, well, more like littered. If you blink, you missed one. Milo jumps to the Island of Conclusions, eats his words during a banquet with the King of Dictionopolis and has his senses stolen by the Senses Taker.

My favorite play on words was a bit more subtle than those. Rhyme and Reason were banished to the Castle in the Air. The phrase is often used to describe daydreaming or having big dreams. On page 236, the Castle in the Air begins to fall, forcing the protagonists to flee. 

“‘But what of the Castle in the Air?’ the bug objected, not very pleased with  the arrangement.

‘Let it drift away,’ said Rhyme.

‘And good riddance,’ added Reason, ‘for no matter how beautiful it seems, it’s still nothing but a prison.’” 

My personal take on this passage is that if you continue daydreaming without action, you won’t get anywhere — sometimes you just have to take a leap, or you become trapped by your aspirations.

Now onto the things I didn’t enjoy.

The Bad

While the constant play on words was fun at first, it quickly became boring and overly predictable. I felt like I could guess whom Milo would meet or what would happen with very few context clues. 

For example, when the mysterious voice lures Milo, Tock and the Humbug away from the Terrible Trivium’s petty tasks, I instantly guessed that it would be a trap. The gang just met its very first demon after chapters of build up, it would be kind of odd for them to be rescued so quickly without another monster around the corner.

It was almost just as predictable that the “long-nosed, green-eyed, curly-haired, wide-mouthed, thick-necked …. “ monster, wasn’t as terrifying as he described himself, especially after Alec Bings, the boy who grows down instead of up, gave Milo a telescope for seeing things for what they’re truly are just a few chapters prior. 

My second issue with TPT is characters fell a little flat to me. 

Throughout Dictionopolis in particular, I felt like we were being slammed by useless characters. What was the point of the Spelling Bee who simply spelled everything? And what about Officer Shrift who cared about putting people in jail but not keeping them there? 

Even Milo as a main character was bland. 

On the very first page of the book we are told he is a boy “who didn’t know what to do with himself — not just sometimes, but always.” OK. That’s pretty relatable, especially for kids. But we don’t get a whole lot of detail about Milo as a person. We don’t know what color hair he has or what he actually does enjoy. 

Character development is something I hold pretty high on my list of making a good book great. Milo did grow from the start of his story to the end, but I felt like he was more of a placeholder in the journey instead of a catalyst for plot. However, that could be on purpose. Milo may simply be a proxy for readers to imagine themselves in his shoes as he learns these valuable lessons.

Or I’m just asking way too much from a children’s book.

And don’t get me started on the Humbug. The pretentious prude was constantly trying to bail on the adventure that he got everybody stuck in but always wanted the credit when things went well. I understood his purpose as a character was meant to be a pessimist in a group of go-getters, but he could’ve been written better. I often wanted him to be funny, charming or even snarky. He was none of those things. Instead, readers got a gloomy stinkbug who halted the plot with meaningless negativity.

At the end of the book, both King Azaz and the Mathmagician admit that the thing they couldn’t tell Milo about his journey to restore Rhyme and Reason was that it was impossible. But Milo already knew that because the frikkin’ Humbug said it was around every corner. 

However, I’m going to be honest with myself. I am definitely not the target audience for this book. All of the faults I found are trivial and can easily be pointed at the fact that I am 22, have a Liberal Arts degree and should be able to figure out the plot of a children’s book. 

The Best

This was originally meant to be The Ugly, but I genuinely didn’t hate anything enough to call it ugly. Instead, I want to point out the absolute best part of this book — the overall message of knowledge.

At the beginning of TPT, Milo holds a pretty familiar opinion on learning for kids. On page 9 it reads, “he regarded the process of seeking knowledge as the greatest waste of time of all.” However, as the story progresses, Milo learns the value of knowledge through wacky characters.

Tock teaches him the significance of time. (At the end of the book, Milo actually notices that only an hour has passed. PROGRESS!) King Azaz shows him the power of words, the Mathmagician proves that numbers are universal and Alec helps him realize that sometimes things aren’t always what they seem. 

But my favorite lesson came from the Princess of Pure Reason on page 233. “‘You must never feel badly about making mistakes,’ explained Reason quietly, ‘ as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.’”

All together these lessons show that learning is a adventure that has many different facets and paces. You may make mistakes, eat your words, fall into the Doldrums and stray from Reality; but it’s all just part of the journey in seeking knowledge and becoming a better person.

I feel like kid’s books today don’t have these types of lessons. When I look at popular children’s literature now, I think of Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Dog Man. While these books are cute, funny and appealing to kids, I’m not sure they have the same educational value. 

And, honestly, I understand that education isn’t the point of every book and that anything that gets kids to read is valuable, but The Phantom Tollbooth just felt special in its dedication to proving the importance of knowledge to children in a creative way. 

 

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt that The Phantom Tollbooth is witty and endearing. It turns words upside down and inside out as the main character learns the importance of knowledge. It’s an insanely valuable message for kids tied up in a little blue book. 

However, I wouldn’t hand this book to my 10-year-old niece and leave her stranded. The intense word play and difficult concepts might be too much for a fourth grader or any middle schooler for that matter, to tackle alone. Even I had to Google a few words along the way to fully understand what was being twisted. Side note, do kids even know what a tollbooth is today?

That doesn’t mean kids can’t and shouldn’t read TPT, because they absolutely should. My suggestion would be for teachers to read it aloud in class and structure lessons around it. If children were first taught a few literary terms (idioms, analogies, etc.), then it would be an amazing way to spot these different devices as the whimsical story unfolded. 

While I do see the value of this book, I don’t see myself reading it again any time soon. It was nice to come back to it as an adult and actually understand what was happening, but it didn’t give me that “can’t put it down” feeling that I have for so many of my favorite childhood books.

I’ll give it 6.5 Tocks, not Ticks, out of 10. Onto the next.