i love the phantom tollbooth to pieces. literally. our family
copy fell apart with people reading it and, before that, it got
covered with strange stains that nobody would admit to
making. its pages crunched on biscuit crumbs when you
turned them over. it smelt of chocolate and wet dog when i
tried to photocopy part of it to put into an anthology of
fantasy stories, it very nearly disintegrated.
but this is how a good book should be.
i first discovered the phantom tollbooth by reading it aloud
to my children. we all thought of it as a splendidly quirky
adventure story, told in a clear, no frills style and wonderfully
enlivened by jules feiffer's drawings. 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.
you can read it that way and enjoy it thoroughly, but it is
about something. when you see that it is, it adds a whole
extra dimension to the stoty. it is about getting educated. it is
about everyone's complete puzzlement over all the weird and
useless things they make you learn at school. these things
don't add up. they make no sense. there is no rhyme and
reason to any of it. we all wonder why they make us learn
these things.
so, in the story, milo has to go on a journey to rescue the
princesses Rhyme and Reason from the Castle in the air. (you
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