Norton Juster Jules Feiffer DUAL SIGNED AUTOGRAPHED The Phantom Tollbooth HC NEW

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HARDBACK WITH DUST JACKET FOR THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE BOOK  THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH Signed by Norton Juster & Jules Feiffer WITH WEAR TO DUSTJACKET OTHERWISE LIKE NEW. NEVER READ. Synopsis
Illustrated in black-and-white. We're celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary (1996) of this modern kids' classic with a special hardcover edition! This ingenious fantasy centeres around Milo, a bored ten-year-old who comes home to find a large toy tollbooth sitting in his room. Joining forces with a watchdog named Tock, Milo drives through the tollbooth's gates and begins a memorable journey. He meets such characters as the foolish, yet lovable Humbug, the Mathemagician, and the not-so-wicked "Which," Faintly Macabre, who gives Milo the "impossible" mission of returning two princesses to the Kingdom of Wisdom... With almost 4 million copies sold over 50 years after its original publication, generations of readers have now journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic that Philip Pullman says "comes up bright and new every time I read it . . . it will continue to charm and delight for a very long time yet. And teach us some wisdom, too." Enriched by Jules Feiffer's splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of Norton Juster's offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever. For Milo, everything's a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he's got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it's exciting beyond his wildest dreams

Norton Juster is the author of The Phantom Tollbooth. "There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself — not just sometimes but always. When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in ... Nothing really interested him — least of all the things that should have." It was, of course, the doldrums — his own special version of them. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that bored child's transformative journey. The Phantom Tollbooth was the first book I had ever written and my first collaboration with the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who provided the marvelous illustrations. Like most good things that have happened in my life, The Phantom Tollbooth came about because I was trying to avoid doing something else. It was 1958, and after three years in the Navy I returned to New York City to work as an architect. I had also received a grant to do a book on cities for children. I started with great energy and enthusiasm until I found myself waist-deep in stacks of 3-by-5 note cards, exhausted and dispirited. This is not what I wanted to do. In order to stop thinking about cities, I had to start thinking about something else. Sign Up For The NPR Daily Newsletter Catch up on the latest headlines and unique NPR stories, sent every weekday. E-mail address What's your email? By subscribing, you agree to NPR's terms of use and privacy policy. I had been an odd child: quiet, introverted and moody. Little was expected from me. Everyone left me alone to wander around inside my own head. When I grew up I still felt like that puzzled kid — disconnected, disinterested and confused. There was no rhyme or reason in his life. My thoughts focused on him, and I began writing about his childhood, which was really mine. Coming home from school one day, Milo finds an unexpected gift: a highway tollbooth, a map and directions to a place called the Lands Beyond. So off he goes on his journey of discovery. He travels to Dictionopolis, the kingdom of words, to Digitopolis, the land of numbers, escapes from the doldrums, goes astray by jumping to the Island of Conclusions and at last rescues the two princesses, Rhyme and Reason, from the Castle in the Air. Norton Juster was born in Brooklyn in 1929. He is professor emeritus of design at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Courtesy of Norton Juster Courtesy of Norton Juster Not everyone in the publishing world of the 1960s embraced The Phantom Tollbooth. Many said that it was not a children's book, the vocabulary was much too difficult, and the ideas were beyond kids. To top it off, they claimed fantasy was bad for children because it disorients them. The prevailing wisdom of the time held that learning should be more accessible and less discouraging. The aim was that no child would ever have to confront anything that he or she didn't already know. But my feeling is that there is no such thing as a difficult word. There are only words you don't know yet — the kind of liberating words that Milo encounters on his adventure. Today's world of texting and tweeting is quite a different place, but children are still the same as they've always been. They still get bored and confused, and still struggle to figure out the important questions of life. Well, one thing has changed: As many states eliminate tolls on highways, some children may never encounter a real tollbooth. Luckily there are other routes to the Lands Beyond. And it is possible to seek them, and fun to try. Norton Juster (born June 2, 1929) is an American academic, architect, and popular writer. He is best known as an author of children's books, notably for The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line. Contents 1 Biography 2 Books 3 Other media 4 References 5 External links Biography Juster was born in New York City. His father, Samuel Juster, was Jewish and born in Romania, and became an architect through a correspondence course. His mother, Minnie Silberman, came from a Polish Jewish background.[1] His brother, Howard, became an architect as well. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.[2] In 1954, Juster enlisted in the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Navy, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. During one tour, to combat boredom, he began to write and illustrate a story for children, but the commanding officer later reprimanded him for it.[3] Still, Juster also finished an unpublished satirical fairy tale called "The Passing of Irving".[4] Later posted in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, again to combat boredom, he made up a non-existent military publication called the Naval News Service as a scheme to request interviews with attractive women. It worked so amazingly well that a neighbor asked to come along as his assistant. His next scheme was to make the "Garibaldi Society" (inspired by a statue in Washington Square Park), whose raison d'être was to reject anyone who applied for membership, designing an impressive logo, application, and rejection letter. It was at this time he met Jules Feiffer while taking out the trash.[5] About 6 months after meeting Feiffer, Juster received his discharge from the Navy, and worked for a Manhattan architectural firm, with some part-time teaching, and other jobs. Juster, Feiffer, and another friend rented an apartment on State Street. Juster also resorted to pulling pranks occasionally on Feiffer.[6] Juster's celebrated children's novel, The Phantom Tollbooth, was published in 1961, with Feiffer doing the drawings. Although he enjoyed writing, his architectural career remained his primary emphasis. He served as a professor of architecture and environmental design at Hampshire College from its first trimester in 1970 until his retirement in 1992. Juster co-founded a small architectural firm, Juster Pope Associates, in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, in 1970. The firm was renamed Juster Pope Frazier after Jack Frazier joined the firm in 1978. Juster lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Jeanne. Although he has retired from architecture, he still writes. His book The Hello, Goodbye Window, published May 15, 2005, won the Caldecott Medal for Chris Raschka's illustration in 2006. The sequel, Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie, was published in 2008. His most famous publication continues to be The Phantom Tollbooth. Books The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) (ISBN 0-394-81500-9) illustrated by Jules Feiffer The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1963) (ISBN 1-58717-066-3) Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys (1972) (ISBN 0-88708-243-2) Stark Naked: A Paranomastic Odyssey (1969) (Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 71-85568), illus. Arnold Roth So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895 (editor) (1979) (ISBN 0-670-65483-3) — non-fiction Otter Nonsense (1982) (ISBN 0-399-20932-8), illus. Eric Carle As: A Surfeit of Similes (1989) (ISBN 0-688-08139-8) A Woman's Place: Yesterday's Women in Rural America (1996) (ISBN 1-55591-250-8) — non-fiction The Hello, Goodbye Window (Michael Di Capua Books, 2005) (ISBN 0-7868-0914-0), illus. Chris Raschka Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie (2008) (ISBN 9780439929431), illus. Chris Raschka The Odious Ogre (2010) (ISBN 0-545-16202-5), illus. Jules Feiffer Neville (2011) (ISBN 0375867651/ISBN 978-0375867651), illus. G. Brian Karas Jules Ralph Feiffer (born January 26, 1929)[1][2] is an American cartoonist and author, who was considered the most widely read satirist in the country.[3] He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 as America's leading editorial cartoonist, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame. He wrote the animated short Munro, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961. The Library of Congress has recognized his "remarkable legacy", from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children's book author, illustrator, and art instructor.[4] When Feiffer was 17 (in the mid-1940s) he became assistant to cartoonist Will Eisner. There he helped Eisner write and illustrate his comic strips, including The Spirit. He then became a staff cartoonist at The Village Voice beginning in 1956, where he produced the weekly comic strip titled Feiffer until 1997. His cartoons became nationally syndicated in 1959 and then appeared regularly in publications including the Los Angeles Times, the London Observer, The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Nation. In 1997 he created the first op-ed page comic strip for the New York Times, which ran monthly until 2000. He has written more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. His first of many collections of satirical cartoons, Sick, Sick, Sick, was published in 1958, and his first novel, Harry, the Rat With Women, in 1963. He wrote The Great Comic Book Heroes in 1965: the first history of the comic-book superheroes of the late 1930s and early 1940s and a tribute to their creators. In 1979 Feiffer created his first graphic novel, Tantrum. By 1993 he began writing and illustrating books aimed at young readers, with several of them winning awards. Feiffer began writing for the theater and film in 1961, with plays including Little Murders (1967), Feiffer's People (1969), and Knock Knock (1976). He wrote the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge (1971), directed by Mike Nichols, and Popeye (1980), directed by Robert Altman. Besides writing, he is currently an instructor with the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Cartoonist 2.1.1 With Will Eisner (1946–1956) 2.1.2 At The Village Voice (1956–1997) 2.2 Author 2.3 Playwright and screenwriter 2.4 Art instructor 3 Personal life 4 Honors and awards 5 Selected works 6 References 7 External links Early life Feiffer was born in The Bronx, New York City, on January 26, 1929. His parents were David Feiffer and Rhoda (née Davis), and Feiffer was raised in a Jewish household with a younger and an older sister.[5] His father was usually unemployed in his work as a salesman due to the Depression. His mother was a fashion designer who made watercolor drawings of her designs which she sold to various clothing manufacturers in New York. "She'd go door to door selling her designs for $3," recalls Feiffer. The fact that she was the breadwinner, however, created an "atmosphere of silent blame" in the home. Feiffer began drawing at the age of 3. "My mother always encouraged me to draw", he says.[6] When he was 13 his mother gave him a drawing table for his bedroom. She also enrolled him in the Art Students League of New York to study anatomy. He graduated from James Monroe High School in 1947.[7] He won a John Wanamaker Art Contest medal for a crayon drawing of the radio Western hero Tom Mix.[8] He wrote in 1965 about his childhood: I came to the field with a more serious intent than my opiate-minded contemporaries. While they, in those pre-super days, were eating up "Cosmo, Master of Disguise"; "Speed Saunders"; and "Bart Regan Spy", I was counting up how many panels there were to a page, how many pages there were to a story – learning how to form, for my own use, phrases like: @X#?/; marking for future reference which comic book hero was swiped from which radio hero: Buck Marshall from Tom Mix; the Crimson Avenger from The Green Hornet ...[8] Feiffer says that cartoons were his first interest when young, "what I loved the most."[9] He states that because he couldn't write well enough to be a writer, or draw well enough to be an artist, he realized that the best way to succeed would be to combine his limited talents in each of those fields to create something unique.[9] He read comic strips from various newspapers which his father might bring home, and was mostly attracted to the way they told stories. "What I loved best about these comics was that they created a very personal world in which almost anything could take place", Feiffer says. "And readers would accept it even if it had nothing to do with any other kind of world. It was the fantasy world I loved."[9] Among his favorite cartoons were Our Boarding House, Alley Oop and Wash Tubbs.[10] He began to decipher features of different cartoonists, such as the sentimental naturalism of Abbie an' Slats, the [Preston] Sturges-like characters and plots of others, with cadenced dialogue. He recalls that Will Eisner's Spirit rivaled them in structure. And no strip, except [Milton] Caniff's Terry [and the Pirates], rivaled it in atmosphere."[11] Career Cartoonist With Will Eisner (1946–1956) Feiffer proofing Sick Sick Sick in 1958 After Feiffer graduated from high school at 16, he was desperate for a job, and went unannounced to the office of one of his favorite cartoonists, Will Eisner. Eisner was sympathetic to young Feiffer, as Eisner had been in a similar situation when he first started out. He asked Feiffer, "What can you do?" He answered, "I'll do anything. I'll do coloring, or clean-up, or anything, and I'd like to work for nothing."[12] However, Eisner wasn't impressed by Feiffer's art abilities and didn't know how he could employ him. But then he decided to give him a low-paying job when he found out that Feiffer "knew more about him than anybody who had ever lived," said Feiffer. "He had no choice but to hire me as a groupie."[12] Eisner considered Feiffer a mediocre artist, but he "liked the kid's spunk and intensity", writes Eisner biographer Michael Schumacher. Eisner was also aware that they both came from similar backgrounds, despite him being twelve years older. They both had fathers who struggled to support their family, and both their mothers were strong figures who held the family together through hardships.[12] "He had a hunger for comics that Eisner rarely saw in artists", notes Schumacher. "Eisner decided that there was something to this wisecracking kid."[12] When Feiffer later asked for a raise, Eisner instead gave him his own page in The Spirit section, and let him do his own coloring.[7] As Eisner recalled in 1978: He began working as just a studio man – he would do erasing, cleanup ... Gradually it became very clear that he could write better than he could draw and preferred it, indeed – so he wound up doing balloons [i.e., dialog]. First he was doing balloons based on stories that I'd create. I would start a story off and say, 'Now here I want the Spirit to do the following things – you do the balloons, Jules.' Gradually, he would take over and do stories entirely on his own, generally based on ideas we'd talked about. I'd come in generally with the first page, then he would pick it up and carry it from there.[13] Our fights were always collegial. Never once did [Eisner] pull rank on me. I was always amazed by what he let me get away with. It shows how close and tight the relationship was, that he let me do that parody. He had great generosity of soul —Jules Feiffer[12] They collaborated well on The Spirit, sharing ideas, arguing points, and making changes when they agreed. In 1947, Feiffer also attended the Pratt Institute for a year to improve his art style.[12] Over time, Eisner valued Feiffer's opinions and judgments more often, appreciating his "uncanny knack" for capturing the way people talked, without using contrived dialogue. Eisner recalls that Feiffer "had a real ear for writing characters that lived and breathed. Jules was always attentive to nuances, such as sounds and expressions" which made stories seem more real.[12] At The Village Voice (1956–1997) 1976 candid After working with Eisner for nearly a decade, he chose to start creating his own comic strips. In 1956, after again first proving his talent by working for free, he became a staff cartoonist at The Village Voice where he produced the weekly comic strip titled Feiffer. Feiffer's strips ran for 42 years, until 1997, at first titled Sick Sick Sick, then as Feiffer's Fables, and finally as simply Feiffer. After a year with the Voice, Feiffer compiled a collection of many of his satire cartoons into a best-selling book, Sick Sick Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living (1958), a dissection of popular social and political neuroses. The success of that collection led to his becoming a regular contributor to the London Observer and Playboy magazine.[3] Director Stanley Kubrick, a fellow Bronx native, invited Feiffer to write a screenplay for Sick, Sick, Sick, although the film was never made.[14] After first becoming aware of Feiffer's work, Kubrick wrote him in 1958: The comic themes you weave are very close to my heart ... I must express unqualified admiration for the scenic structure of your "strips" and the eminently speakable and funny dialog ... I should be most interested in furthering our contact with an eye toward doing a film along the moods and themes you have so brilliantly accomplished.[15] By April 1959, Feiffer was distributed nationally by the Hall Syndicate, initially in The Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger and Long Island Press.[16][17] Eventually, his strips covered the nation, including magazines, and were published regularly in major publications such as the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy and The Nation. He was commissioned in 1997 by The New York Times to create its first op-ed page comic strip, which ran monthly until 2000. Feiffer comic strip (1959) Feiffer's cartoons were typically mini satires, where he portrayed ordinary people's thoughts about subjects such as sex, marriage, violence and politics. Writer Larry DuBois describes Feiffer's cartoon style: Feiffer had no stories to tell. His main concern was to explore character. In a series of a dozen or so pictures, he would show the shifts of mood that flickered across the faces of men and women as they tried, often vainly, to explain themselves to the world, to their husbands and wives, to their mistresses and lovers, to their employers, to their rulers, or simply to the unseen adversaries at the other end of the telephone wires ... It would be no exaggeration to say that his dialog is as acute as any that is being written America today. Dialog aimed at sophisticated minds, usually with the purpose of shaking them out of sophistication into real awareness.[9] Author Feiffer published the hit Sick, Sick, Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living in 1958 (which featured a collection of cartoons from about 1950 to 1956), and followed up with More Sick, Sick, Sick and other strip collections, including The Explainers, Boy Girl, Boy Girl, Hold Me!, Feiffer's Album, The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler, Feiffer on Nixon, Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan, Marriage Is an Invasion of Privacy and Feiffer's Children. Passionella (1957) is a graphic narrative initially anthologized in Passionella and Other Stories, a variation on the story of Cinderella. The protagonist is Ella, a chimney sweep who is transformed into a Hollywood movie star. Passionella was used in a musical, The Apple Tree. Feiffer's post-nomination Obama cartoon from The Village Voice (2008) His cartoons, strips and illustrations have been reprinted by Fantagraphics as Feiffer: The Collected Works. Explainers (2008) reprints all of his strips from 1956 to 1966.[16] David Kamp reviewed the book in The New York Times: His strip, usually six to eight borderless panels, initially appeared under the title Sick Sick Sick, with the subtitle 'A Guide to Non-Confident Living'. As the Lenny Bruce-ish language suggests, the earliest strips are very much of their time, the postwar Age of Anxiety in the big city; you can practically smell the espresso, the unfiltered ciggies, the lanolin whiff of woolly jumpers.[18] Feiffer has written two novels (1963's Harry the Rat with Women, 1977's Ackroyd) and several children's books, including Bark, George, Henry, The Dog with No Tail, A Room with a Zoo, The Daddy Mountain, and A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears. He partnered with The Walt Disney Company and writer Andrew Lippa to adapt his book The Man in the Ceiling into a musical.[19] He illustrated the children's books The Phantom Tollbooth and The Odious Ogre. His non-fiction includes the 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes. I want to write about marriage. I think the most interesting story is how men and women get on with each other, the terms they accept to live together and survive together, the compromises they make, the betrayals of themselves and of each other, and how, despite the fact that over and over again they find that it can't possibly work, it still seems to be preferable to anything else they know about. In the end, it becomes rather heroic. —Jules Feiffer, Playboy interview[9] Feiffer also wrote and drew one of the earliest graphic novels, the hardcover Tantrum (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979),[20] described on its dustjacket as a "novel-in-pictures". Like the trade paperback The Silver Surfer (Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books, August 1978), by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and the hardcover and trade paperback versions of Will Eisner's A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (Baronet Books, October 1978), this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores, whereas other early graphic novels, such as Sabre (Eclipse Books, August 1978), where distributed through some of the first comic-book stores. His autobiography, Backing into Forward: A Memoir (Doubleday, 2010), received positive reviews from The New York Times[21] and Publishers Weekly, which wrote: His account of hitchhiking cross-country invades Kerouac territory, while his ink-stained memories of the comics industry rival Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize–winning fictional portrait. Two years in the military gave Feiffer fodder for the trenchant Munro (about a child who is drafted). Such satirical social and political commentary became the turning point in his lust for fame, which finally happened, after many rejections, when acclaim for his anxiety-ridden Village Voice strips served as a springboard into other projects.[22] Feiffer's ad art for the Beat musical The Nervous Set (1959) He has had retrospectives at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress and The School of Visual Arts. His artwork is exhibited at and represented by Chicago, Illinois' Jean Albano Gallery.[23] In 1996, Feiffer donated his papers and several hundred original cartoons and book illustrations to the Library of Congress.[7] In 2014, Feiffer published "Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel" through Liveright Publishing. In 2016, Feiffer published "Cousin Joseph", a prequel to "Kill My Mother". This was also published through Liveright Publishing. Feiffer's picture book for young readers, Rupert Can Dance, will be published by FSG in 2014. Playwright and screenwriter Feiffer's plays include Little Murders (1967), Feiffer's People (1969), Knock Knock (1976), Elliot Loves (1990), The White House Murder Case, and Grown Ups. After Mike Nichols adapted Feiffer's unproduced play Carnal Knowledge as a 1971 film, Feiffer scripted Robert Altman's Popeye, Alain Resnais's I Want to Go Home, and the film adaptation of Little Murders. The original production of Hold Me! was directed by Caymichael Patten and opened at The American Place Theatre, Subplot Cafe, as part of its American Humorist Series on January 13, 1977. The production ran on the Showtime cable network in 1981.[7] Feiffer moved to Shelter Island, New York in 2017.[24] He wrote the book for a musical based on a story he wrote earlier "Man in the Ceiling" about a boy cartoonist who learned to pursue his dream despite pressures to conform. The musical was produced and directed by Jeffrey Seller in 2017 at the Bay Street Theatre in neighboring Sag Harbor, New York.[25][26][26] Art instructor Feiffer is an adjunct professor at Stony Brook Southampton. Previously he taught at the Yale School of Drama and Northwestern University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program. He was in residence at the Arizona State University Barrett Honors College from November 27 to December 2, 2006. In June–August 2009, Feiffer was in residence as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he taught an undergraduate course on graphic humor in the 20th century.[7] Personal life Feiffer was married three times and has three children. His daughter Halley Feiffer is an actress and playwright.[27] His third marriage took place in September 2016, when he married freelance writer JZ Holden; the ceremony combined Jewish and Buddhist traditions.[28] She is the author of Illusion of Memory (2013). Honors and awards 1961, recipient of a George Polk Awards for his cartoons;[4] 1961, film Munro won Academy Award for animated short; 1969 and 1970, won Obie Award and Outer Circle Critics Award for plays Little Murders and The White House Murder Case; 1986, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for political cartoons[7] 1995, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters;[7] 2004, inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame; a 2004, received the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award;[29] 2006, received the Creativity Foundation's Laureate[30] 2010, won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America.[4][31] Selected works Sick, Sick, Sick (1958) Passionella and Other Stories (1959) The Explainers (1960) Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl (1961) The Feiffer Album (1962) Hold Me! (1962) Harry: The Rat with Women, a Novel (1963) Feiffer's Album (1963) The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler (1964) The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965) Feiffer on Civil Rights (1966) The Penguin Feiffer (1966) Feiffer's Marriage Manual (1967) Pictures at a Prosecution (1971) Feiffer on Nixon, the Cartoon Presidency (1974) Knock Knock (1976) Tantrum (1979) Jules Feiffer's America: From Eisenhower to Reagan (1982) Marriage Is an Invasion of Privacy and Other Dangerous Views (1984) Feiffer's Children (1986) Ronald Reagan in Movie America (1988) The Man in the Ceiling (1993) A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears (1995) Meanwhile— (1997) I Lost My Bear (1998) Backing into Forward: A Memoir (2010)[32] The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's fantasy adventure novel written by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, published in 1961 by Random House in the US. In 1958, Juster had received a Ford Foundation grant for a children's book about cities. Unable to make progress on that project, he turned to writing what became The Phantom Tollbooth, his first book. His housemate, Feiffer, a cartoonist, interested himself in the project. Jason Epstein, an editor at Random House, bought the book and published it. It received rave reviews and has sold in excess of three million copies, far more than expected. It has been adapted into a film, opera, and play, and translated into many different languages. The Phantom Tollbooth is the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon, and, having nothing better to do, drives through it in his toy car, transporting him to the Kingdom of Wisdom, once prosperous but now troubled. There he acquires two faithful companions and goes on a quest to find two exiled princesses—Rhyme and Reason—from the Castle in the Air and bring them back to the kingdom. In the process, he learns valuable lessons and finds a love of learning. The writing is full of puns and wordplay, such as when Milo unintentionally jumps to Conclusions, an island in Wisdom, thus exploring the literal meanings of idioms. Although the book is an adventure story at first glance, one of its major themes is the need for a love of education; this is how Milo applies what he has learned in school, advances in his personal development, and learns to love the life that previously bored him. Critics have compared the book's appeal to that of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Contents 1 Plot 2 Writing 3 Themes 4 Influences and comparisons 5 Publication and reception 6 Later history, editions and adaptations 7 References 8 Other works cited 9 Selected editions 10 External links Plot Map drawn by Jules Feiffer to illustrate the book See also: List of The Phantom Tollbooth characters Milo is a boy bored by the world around him; every activity seems a waste of time. He arrives home from another boring day at school to find a mysterious package. Among its contents are a small tollbooth and a map of "the Lands Beyond", illustrating the Kingdom of Wisdom (which will also guide the reader from its place on the endpapers of the book). Attached to the package is a note "For Milo, who has plenty of time". Warned by an included sign to have his destination in mind, he decides without much thought to go to Dictionopolis, assuming this is a pretend game to be played on the floor of his room. He maneuvers through the tollbooth in his electric toy car, and instantly finds himself driving on a road that is clearly not in his city apartment. Milo begins with Expectations, a pleasant place where he starts on Wisdom's road. In Expectations, he seeks directions from the Whether Man, who is full of endless talk. As Milo drives on, he daydreams and soon is paying no attention at all, and gets lost in the Doldrums, a colorless place where nothing ever happens. Milo is soon joining the inhabitants, the Lethargarians, in killing time there, a pastime angrily interrupted by the arrival of Tock, a talking, oversize dog with an alarm clock on each side (a "watchdog"), who tells Milo that only by thinking can he get out of the Doldrums. Head abuzz with unaccustomed thoughts, Milo is soon back on his road, and the watchdog joins him on his journey through Wisdom. Milo and Tock travel to Dictionopolis, one of two capital cities of the divided Kingdom of Wisdom, and home to King Azaz the Unabridged. They meet King Azaz's cabinet officials and visit the Word Market, where the words and letters are sold that empower the world. A fight between the Spelling Bee and the blustering Humbug breaks up the market, and Milo and Tock are arrested by the very short Officer Shrift. In prison, Milo meets the Which (not to be confused with Witch), also known as Faintly Macabre, long in charge of which words should be used in Wisdom. She tells him how the two rulers, King Azaz and his brother, the Mathemagician, had two adopted younger sisters, Rhyme and Reason, to whom everyone came to settle disputes. All lived in harmony until the rulers disagreed with the princesses' decision that letters (championed by Azaz) and numbers (by the Mathemagician) were equally important. They banished the princesses to the Castle in the Air, and since then, the land has had neither Rhyme nor Reason. Milo and Tock leave the dungeon. King Azaz hosts them at a banquet where the guests literally eat their words, served to them on plates. After the meal, King Azaz lets Milo and Tock talk themselves into a dangerous quest to rescue the princesses. Azaz flatters the Humbug into being their guide, and boy, dog and insect set off for the Mathemagician's capital of Digitopolis as they must gain his approval before they can begin their quest. Along the way, they meet such characters as Alec Bings, a little boy suspended in the air who sees through things and who will grow down until he reaches the ground. Milo then loses time in substituting for Chroma the Great, a conductor whose orchestra creates the colors of the world. In Digitopolis, they meet the Mathemagician, who is still angry at Azaz, and who will not give his blessing to anything that his brother has approved. Milo maneuvers him into saying he will permit the quest if the boy can show the two have concurred on anything since they banished the princesses. To the number wizard's shock, Milo proves that the two have agreed to disagree, and the Mathemagician gives his reluctant consent. In the Mountains of Ignorance, the journeyers contend with demons like the Terrible Trivium and the Gelatinous Giant. After overcoming testing obstacles and their own fears, they reach the Castle in the Air. Princesses Rhyme and Reason welcome Milo and agree to return to Wisdom. Unable to enter the castle, the demons cut it loose, letting it drift away, but Milo realizes Tock can carry them down because time flies. The demons pursue, but the armies of Wisdom repel them. Rhyme and Reason heal the divisions in the old Kingdom of Wisdom, Azaz and the Mathemagician are reconciled, and all enjoy a three-day celebration. Milo says goodbye and drives back through the tollbooth. Suddenly he is back in his own room, and discovers he has been gone only an hour, though his journey seemed to take weeks. He awakens the next day with plans to return to the kingdom, but finds the tollbooth gone when he gets home from school. A note instead is there, "For Milo, who now knows the way." The note states that the tollbooth is being sent to another child who needs help finding direction in life. Milo is somewhat disappointed but agrees and looks at a now-interesting world around him, concluding that even if he found a way back, he might not have time to go, for there is so much to do right where he is. Writing Architect Norton Juster was living in his hometown of Brooklyn, after three years in the navy.[2] In June 1960, he gained a $5,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to write a children's book about cities.[3] Juster argued that the young baby boomers would soon have responsibility for the cities, and many lived in the suburbs and did not know them. In his proposal, he said he wanted "to stimulate and heighten perception – to help children notice and appreciate the visual world around them – to help excite them and shape their interest in an environment they will eventually reshape."[4] Beginning with great enthusiasm, he ground to a halt with too many notes and too little progress. He took a weekend break with friends at Fire Island, and came back determined to put aside the cities book and seek inspiration in another writing project.[2] Milo continued to think of all sorts of things; of the many detours and wrong turns that were so easy to take, of how fine it was to be moving and, most of all, of how much could be accomplished with just a little thought. The Phantom Tollbooth (after exiting the Doldrums) [5] Juster's guilt over his lack of progress on the cities book had led him to write pieces of stories about a little boy named Milo,[6] which he began to develop into a book. Juster quit his job so that he could work on the book.[7] His imagination fired by a boy who approached him on the street and with whom he discussed the nature of infinity, Juster wanted to finish the story about "a boy who asked too many questions" before returning to the book on cities.[8] Juster shared his house in Brooklyn Heights with cartoonist Jules Feiffer whose bedroom was immediately below, and who could hear him pacing in the night. Feiffer was surprised to learn that his friend's insomnia was not caused by the cities book, but by a book about a boy. Juster showed Feiffer the draft to date and, unbidden, the artist began sketching illustrations. Feiffer knew Judy Sheftel, who put deals together in the publishing trade and was his future bride. Sheftel got Jason Epstein, an innovative editor at Random House with a deep appreciation for children's literature, to agree to review the manuscript.[9] Some at Random House considered the book's vocabulary too difficult: at the time, educators advised against children's literature containing words the target audience did not already know, fearing the unfamiliar would discourage young learners.[2] Based on seven chapters of manuscript, plus a three-page outline of the rest of the story, Epstein bought the book.[10] Feiffer in 1958 with pictures from his first book Since Juster did the cooking for the housemates, if Feiffer wanted to eat, he had to do the drawings.[11] Feiffer quickly realized the book would require illustrations of the type and quality that John Tenniel had created for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and although a nationally known artist, doubted his competence to do the text justice.[12] Feiffer considers the double-spread illustration of demons late in the book to be a success and one of his favorites. It differs from his usual style (which would involve a white background), and instead uses Gustave Doré's drawings as an inspiration.[13] It became a game, with Feiffer trying to draw things the way he wanted, and Juster trying to describe things that were impossible to sketch.[14] These included the Triple Demons of Compromise—one short and fat, one tall and thin, and the third exactly like the first two.[15] Feiffer got his revenge by depicting the author as the Whether Man, clad in a toga.[16] Repeated edits altered the protagonist's name (originally Tony), removed his parents entirely from the book, and deleted text attempting to describe how the tollbooth package had been delivered. Milo's age was removed from the text—early drafts have him aged eight or nine—as Juster decided not to state it, lest potential readers decide they were too old to care.[17] Themes Since no one has ever bothered to explain the importance of learning to Milo, he regards school as the biggest waste of time in his life.[18] Juster intended that the book speak to the importance of learning to love learning.[2] Teaching methods that might bore children, by memorization for example, are mocked in the book, as in the case of the Spelling Bee. Like the Bee, the Humbug's insult to his fellow insect goes over Milo's head, but possibly not the reader's: "A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect."[18][19] According to Mary Liston in her journal article on law in fantasy realms, "The Phantom Tollbooth concerns the difference between education and wisdom and what processes are conducive to synthesizing both, so as to encourage an attitude of engagement, alertness, and responsibility within an increasingly autonomous individual."[20] "BOSH!" replied the Humbug. "We're an old and noble family, honorable to the core—Insecticus humbugium, if I may use the Latin. Why, we fought in the crusades with Richard the Lion Heart, crossed the Atlantic with Columbus, blazed trails with the pioneers, and today many members of the family hold important government positions throughout the world. History is full of Humbugs." The Phantom Tollbooth (in Dictionopolis) [21] Another theme is the need for common sense to back up rules. Milo journeys through a land where, without Rhyme or Reason, the art of governance has been lost, leading to bizarre results. Milo repeatedly meets characters to whom words are more important than their meaning. The Whether Man, for all his talk, is unable to provide Milo with the information or guidance the boy wants, while Officer Shrift's investigation of the overturning of the Word Market contains the forms of law, without justice. The denizens around Digitopolis are little better; the twelve-faced Dodecahedron, named for what he is, turns the logic of his naming on its head when he asks if everyone with one face is called Milo. The attitudes now displayed by the adherents of both brothers are summed up by the Dodecahedron, "as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?"[22] As Milo struggles with words and begins the process of making himself their master, he also has difficulty with numbers, especially when he speaks with .58 of a child, who with parents and two siblings (whom Milo does not meet) makes up an average family. Milo has had difficulties in school with mathematics and problem solving; his reaction to this encounter is to protest that averages are not real. The partial child enlightens Milo that there is beauty in math beyond the tedium of learning an endless set of rules, "one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are".[18][23] Late in the book, Princess Reason counsels Milo, who has much learning ahead of him, not to be discouraged by its complexity, "You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... 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".[18][24] An index card in the Juster papers sets forth the germ of the princess' "memorable" counsel to Milo, "Quite often the road to Rhyme + Reason is through the right mistakes."[24] Although Milo is bored with learning, that does not mean he knew nothing before his journey. He exhibits characteristics of a well-schooled child of his time; his speech is polite and peppered with "please" and "thank you", and when he unexpectedly encounters the partial child, he requests pardon for staring.[18] He can count to a thousand, though his tact in bringing up the subject in the presence of the numbers-hating King Azaz is not the best. Mindful of his mother's admonition to eat lightly when a guest, he initially orders a light meal at the banquet, only to find the waiters bringing in insubstantial light beams. Not realizing he will be asked to eat his words, he then makes a plausible start at a speech before being interrupted by the king.[25] The Phantom Tollbooth displays Milo's growth; Leonard S. Marcus in his notes to its annotated edition writes that the boy learns to think in the abstract, pledging after his unintentional jump to Conclusions that he will not make up his mind again without a good reason. Milo does not accept the word of the demon of insincerity that he is a threat and is rewarded by learning he is not.[26] Just for a moment, Milo is able to float in the air beside Alec Bings and see things from the perspective he will have as an adult, allowing the young reader to contemplate what it will be like to do the same.[18] According to Liston, Milo "transforms himself from an unthinking and compliant Lethargarian to a young adult with greater consciousness, a firmer sense of self, and a newly found set of responsibilities".[20] Even though the day is won by Milo and his fellow questers, it is a great but not a permanent victory, as he hears the kingly brothers begin to argue again as he departs. Juster has written that it was his intent to get Milo out of there as quickly as possible, and that "the fight would have to be won again and again".[27] Milo's trip through the lands beyond the tollbooth teaches the previously bored child to appreciate both journey and destination. This is a lesson that had been unlearned by the citizens of Wisdom, as exemplified by the described fate of the twin cities of Reality and Illusions. Although the city of Illusions never actually existed, Reality was lost as its residents concentrated on getting to their destination as quickly as possible, and, unappreciated, the city withered away, unnoticed by the busy people who still hasten along its former streets. Milo meets his trials by defining himself as different from the kingdom's inhabitants, who either demand or accept conformity, as enforced by the kingdom's laws, which discourage (and even outlaw) thought. Milo cannot accept such laws, beginning when, in the Doldrums, he thinks, thus violating a local ordinance and separating himself from the thoughtless inhabitants. Liston opined that because the Kingdom of Wisdom's "laws require the impossible, they contradict what it means to be fully human".[28][29] Influences and comparisons The Phantom Tollbooth contains allusions to many works, including those loved by Juster in his own upbringing. Some of Juster's favorite books as a child, including The Wind in the Willows, had endpaper maps; Juster insisted on one, over Feiffer's opposition, going so far as to sketch one and require that his collaborator reproduce it in his own style.[30] Juster was also inspired by his father Samuel's love of puns, with which the book is more than sprinkled. In his childhood, Juster spent much time listening to the radio.[6] According to Juster, the need to envision the action when listening to radio serials helped inspire The Phantom Tollbooth, as well as yielding the character of Tock, based on sidekick Jim Fairfield from Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Jim gave Tock his wisdom, courage, and adventurous spirit.[6] As a child, Juster had synesthesia, and could only do arithmetic by making associations between numbers and colors. He remembered that the condition affected word associations. "One of the things I always did was think literally when I heard words. On the Lone Ranger [radio serial] they would say, 'Here come the Injuns!' and I always had an image of engines, of train engines."[3] "Oh dear, all those words again," thought Milo as he climbed into the wagon with Tock and the cabinet members. "How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a—" "Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying." And, sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move through the streets, and in a very short time they arrived at the royal palace. The Phantom Tollbooth (in Dictionopolis) [31] Some of the incidents in the book stem from Juster's own past. In Digitopolis, the Numbers Mine, where gemlike numerals are dug for, recalled one of Juster's architecture professors at the University of Pennsylvania, who compared numbers and equations to jewels.[32] The Marx Brothers films were a staple for Juster as a child and his father would quote lengthy passages from the movies;[33] this inspired the unending series of straight-faced puns that fills the book.[15] Growing up in a Jewish-American household where the parents demanded high achievement, Juster was intimately familiar with expectations, though in his case many of his parents' hopes were centered on his older brother, an academic star.[34] The Terrible Trivium, the well-dressed, polite demon who sets the questers to mindless tasks, was Juster's way of representing his own tendency to avoid what he should be doing in favor of a more congenial occupation, such as his evasion of the grant project to write The Phantom Tollbooth.[35] Juster drew on Feiffer's life experiences as well; the Whether Man's adage "Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens" was a favorite of the cartoonist's mother.[36] Juster had not read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when he wrote The Phantom Tollbooth, but the two books, each about a bored child plunged into a world of absurd logic, have repeatedly been compared.[15][18] According to Daniel Hahn in his 2012 article on the Juster book, "Alice is clearly Milo's closest literary kin".[15] Milo's conversation with the Whether Man, which leaves him no more comprehending than when he came, recalls that of Alice with the Cheshire Cat.[16] The questions of authority (something omnipresent for a child) and of justice run through both books; the Queen of Hearts' arbitrary justice is echoed, though with less violence, by Officer Shrift.[18] Alice's sovereigns, representing the authority figures of Victorian childhood life, rule absolutely (though not necessarily effectively); a child of the post-World War II world, Milo journeys through a more bureaucratic realm.[20] His quest is far more purposeful than the frustrating journey Alice experiences, and the outcome differs as well—Milo restores his kingdom while Alice overturns hers. Carroll leaves us uncertain if Alice has learned anything from her adventures, but Juster makes it clear that Milo has acquired tools he will need to find his way through life.[18] Publication and reception The Phantom Tollbooth was published in September 1961. Its competition among new books for the minds and hearts of children included Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. The Bronze Bow, set in the Biblical times, was newly available, and would bring Elizabeth George Speare her second Newbery Award in three years. Neither publisher nor first-time author expected many sales for The Phantom Tollbooth, but Juster was nevertheless disappointed not to find his work on store shelves. His mother, Minnie, did her part, as her son put it, "terrorizing" bookstore owners into displaying it.[3][37] "What a silly system." The boy laughed. "Then your head keeps changing its height and you always see things in a different way? Why, when you're fifteen things won't look at all the way they did when you were ten, and at twenty everything will change again." "I suppose so," replied Milo, for he had never really thought about the matter. The Phantom Tollbooth (meeting the elevated Alec Bings) [38] Juster says the book was rescued from the remainders table when Emily Maxwell wrote a strong review of it in The New Yorker.[3] Maxwell wrote, "As Pilgrim's Progress is concerned with the awakening of the sluggardly spirit, The Phantom Tollbooth is concerned with the awakening of the lazy mind."[6] Hers was far from the only positive piece; children's author Ann McGovern reviewed it for The New York Times, writing "Norton Juster's amazing fantasy has something wonderful for anyone old enough to relish the allegorical wisdom of Alice in Wonderland and the pointed whimsy of The Wizard of Oz ".[39] John Crosby wrote for the New York Herald Tribune, "In a world which sometimes seems to have gone mad, it is refreshing to pause and consider for a moment a book for children which contains a character called 'Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked Which.' The name of the book is The Phantom Tollbooth and it was written by a bearded elf named Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, who is the cleverest of the young neurotics".[40] Dissenting was the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, which in March 1962 deemed the book an "intensive and extensive fantasy, heavily burdened with contrivance and whimsy".[41] In 1962, the book was published in Britain. Siriol Hugh-Jones wrote for The Times Literary Supplement, "The Phantom Tollbooth is something every adult seems sure will turn into a modern Alice ... The obvious guess is that the appeal of this sort of writing is directed towards just the sort of adults who derive a perfectly grown-up pleasure from regularly rereading the Alices. As one might expect, it is illustrated by every grown-up's favourite child-like pictures with the built-in sad sophistication, the work of Jules Feiffer."[42] Jennifer Bourdillon reviewed it for The Listener, "This is the story of an imaginary journey, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress of a little boy in his car ... One would hardly have thought from the sound of this that it would have so magnetic an appeal, but the brilliant verbal humour and the weird and wonderful characters (the Dodecahedron. the Watchdog, Faintly Macabre) make it that rare delight, a book which parents and children can share."[43] It reached Australia in 1963; The Canberra Times' reviewer, J.E.B., deemed it memorable, causing readers to quote from it and leaf through its pages again.[44] Later history, editions and adaptations After publication, Juster sent a copy of the book to the Ford Foundation, with an explanation of how the projected book on cities had transformed into The Phantom Tollbooth.[45] He never heard back from them, and learned years later that they were delighted by the turn of events.[3] With the book having become an unexpected hit, Juster found himself answering letters from young readers, and a few parents. He found that children understood the wordplay at different ages, and heard from the occasional college student as well. Some students wrote a second time after a gap of years "and they'll talk to me about a whole different book, normally. But now they've got a lot more of the words right. A lot more of the fun kind of crazy references".[45] He learned too that readers were capable of more than he had intended, as in the case of the letter sent by the Mathemagician to King Azaz. Composed entirely of numbers, some readers assumed it was a code and set about breaking it, only to appeal to Juster for help when they were not successful. The numbers were not intended to have any meaning, and were meant to convey that the Mathemagician's letter could not have been understood by Azaz or his advisers.[46] And, in the very room in which he sat, there were books that could take you anywhere, and things to invent, and make, and build, and break, and all the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn't know—music to play, songs to sing, and worlds to imagine and then someday make real. His thoughts darted eagerly about as everything looked new—and worth trying. The Phantom Tollbooth (home again) [47] As the book became acclaimed as a modern classic, it began to be used in the classroom, and Juster corresponded with some teachers.[45] After the book's readers attained adulthood, they wrote of its influence on them. Novelist Cathleen Schine recalled, "it was as if someone had turned on the lights. The concepts of irony, of double entendre, of words as play, of the pleasure and inevitability of intellectual absurdity, were suddenly accessible to me. They made sense to me in an extremely personal way."[48] British fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones read her copy so often it fell apart: "it didn't occur to us that it might be about something. It struck us as a little like The Wizard of Oz, only better."[49] One reader, signing himself "Milo", wrote to Rolling Stone in 1970, "If you want to get freaked out of your undernourished head, pick up The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. They tell you it's a kids' book, but take my word for it, no one who reads it is ever the same. No hype."[49] The book continued to garner positive reviews and comments. In 1998, Amanda Foreman wrote for The Sunday Times of London, "I want to shout about The Phantom from the rooftops. I want to stand in Waterloo and press copies into people's hands. This is a book that should be in every home. ... Whether you are 8 or 88 Juster's mixture of allegorical wisdom and logical whimsy will take you on a journey of the spirit. The Phantom is a mappa mundi of our hearts, proving once again that in laughter and simplicity lies the truth of life".[50] In a 2011 article written for the book's fiftieth anniversary, Adam Gopnik wrote, "The book is made magical by Juster's and Feiffer's gift for transforming abstract philosophical ideas into unforgettable images."[3] The book has been translated into many foreign languages, including Chinese, Croatian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Thai, Turkish and three different Spanish editions: one for Spain, one for Latin America, and one for Spanish speakers in the United States. Juster states that he does not know if the wordplay of the original carries through to the translated works. In 1969, Chuck Jones made The Phantom Tollbooth into a musical film of the same name, produced and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1970. Milo's town and room were depicted in live-action, and with the film changing to animation beyond the tollbooth. Juster disliked the film, describing it as "drivel".[45][49] In February 2010, director Gary Ross began development of a remake of The Phantom Tollbooth, with the first draft of the script written by Alex Tse.[51] As of August 2016, the remake has moved to TriStar Pictures, with Michael Vukadinovich writing the adaption.[52] In 2011, The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth was published, which includes sketches and copies of Juster's handwritten drafts and word lists, Feiffer's early drawings, and an introduction and annotations by Leonard S. Marcus. A fiftieth anniversary edition was also published, with appreciations by Maurice Sendak, Michael Chabon and Philip Pullman.[53] More than three million copies have been sold of the original book in the U.S. alone. It has been adapted into a small-scale opera with music by Arnold Black, and a book by Juster and Sheldon Harnick, produced by Opera Delaware in 1995. It was then revamped into a musical that had its debut to strong reviews at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and then made a national tour.[54] The Phantom Tollbooth remains acknowledged as a classic of children's literature.[55] Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S. National Education Association named it one of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".[56] In 2012, it was ranked number 21 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal.[57] In 2017, TriStar Pictures announced that Matt Shakman would direct its upcoming "live-action/hybrid" film adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth.[58] In 2018, Carlos Saldanha replaced Shankman due to scheduling conflicts. Theodore Melfi is drafting the screenplay after Michael Vukadinovich and Phil Johnston.[59] Juster feels that his book still has relevance today, although children's lives have changed since 1961: When I grew up I still felt like that puzzled kid—disconnected, disinterested and confused. There was no rhyme or reason in his life. My thoughts focused on him, and I began writing about his childhood, which was really mine ... Today's world of texting and tweeting is quite a different place, but children are still the same as they've always been. They still get bored and confused, and still struggle to figure out the important questions of life. Well, one thing has changed: As many states eliminate tolls on highways, some children may never encounter a real tollbooth. Luckily there are other routes to the Lands Beyond. And it is possible to seek them, and fun to try.[2]
  • Topic: Classics
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Author: NORMAN JUSTER
  • Subject: Children's
  • Language: English
  • Special Attributes: Dust Jacket, Illustrated

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