On My Shelves: The Phantom Tollbooth

"There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself – not just sometimes, but always."

     Milo is a boy who – in a later era – might be heading towards the clothing racks to find something darker than black to wear. He sees nothing of interest in his world; even the few things that he might care about he can't work up the energy to engage with. He stares at the pavement when he walks, seeing nothing around him. He waits desperately to get out of school, but finds himself so bored outside of it that he longs to be back in. His world is gray, colorless, and to Milo without meaning; he doesn't even understand how little he understands, nor has any grasp of what the point of seeking any knowledge or understanding would be. He is miserable without even recognizing it.

 

But then he comes home to discover an immense box in his room, with an attached envelope reading: "For Milo, who has plenty of time."

 

No matter what his other quirks, Milo is still a young boy, and discovering a gigantic surprise gift is enough to temporarily rouse him from his lethargy and unwrap it – to find it is a "Genuine Turnpike Tollbooth", complete with coins for paying tolls, a map, precautionary signs for approaching the booth, and a book of rules and regulations.

 

Milo finds this rather peculiar, and can't figure out what sort of a game this might be, but as he has nothing better to do and this has at least piqued his interest for the moment, Milo sets up the tollbooth as directed, gets in the small electric car he hasn't played with in months or longer, and drives through –

 

-- to find himself speeding down a real highway, with nary a sign of his room in sight.

 

Milo's ennui does, at least, insulate him from the shock of such a ridiculous transition; his reaction is simply to realize that this was a vastly more serious game than he had imagined.

 

But it is about to get stranger…

 

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is one of the most whimsical and interesting children's books ever written. Milo has not simply crossed over into some ordinary fantasy land (if I can be excused for such a phrase) but into a conceptual land, where abstract concepts become very concrete indeed. There he will meet such concepts and phrases embodied as people – Tock, the Watchdog, the Whether Man, Canby (who is, of course, as strong as can be, and as weak as can be…), the awful DYNNE, and the more sinister creatures such as the Terrible Trivium and the Senses Taker. He will journey to Dictionopolis and the Valley of Sound and the realm of the Mathemagician.

 

And in his journey he will learn the value of understanding, of words, of numbers… of learning itself… and bring back the twin rulers of the realm, Rhyme and Reason.

 

For all its wordplay and whimsy, The Phantom Tollbooth is not a purely funny book, nor as light as it might appear. There are some very creepy and eerie sequences – I find the Terrible Trivium's trap to be possibly the most frightening, for he manages to catch our heroes in it without them even realizing, at first, that he is an enemy or that the tasks he sets them are, indeed, an almost inescapable trap of endless, mindless, and unimportant tasks that will distract them forever from their mission.

 

The entire plot of The Phantom Tollbooth is the development of Milo from the almost soul-dead boy we see in the beginning to a young man who has come to understand the joys of knowledge and exploration, the wonders available in the entire world around him if he only opens his eyes to see, and it is carried off beautifully. The gray, dull opening puts us into Milo's frighteningly apathetic state of mind, and as the fog of boredom and carelessness begins to lift, we ourselves begin to feel again the joys of wonder, and curiosity, and surprise, and perhaps even of real fear and dread as well as courage and triumph.

 

This was one of my favorite children's books when growing up; I am incredibly pleased to find that it holds up wonderfully now, decades later.

 

This is a book you should give – or perhaps even read – to your children. And if you don't have any children… well, why not read it for yourself?