The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (2011, Hardcover, Anniversary)

I was almost grabbing absolute strangers on the street and telling them they had to read The Phantom Toll Booth by Norton Juster. Older son hasn't (and it's almost impossible to find something he hasn't perused) but his new darling wife had it in her collection of books from school. I hope it reads it soon because this should be on every sophomore and junior high school students' summer reading list. I touted it to my new boss, left him my copy, and he ended up ordering it for his Kindle. I bought my own 50th anniversary edition.

Yes, it is marked 'juvenile" or young adult in the library stacks, but it needs a certain maturity to get all the puns. Adults reading it will be tempted to find their fellow workers and neighbors in the characters that Milo meets during his adventures in Dictionopolis and Digitopolis. The book is only 256 pages long; most pages have fabulous illustrations by Jules Feiffer (for all you youngsters, Feiffer used to draw many of the cartoons in Playboy ... you know some people really did read the magazine for other reasons). I dog-earred over 20 pages so it will be difficult to select those vignettes I loved the most, but here goes.

As I have been reading more "thoughtful" books lately, either poetic or philosophical, and even a couple of almost sociological tracts, despite that course being an anathema to me in college. So within this recent context to connect themes, I loved Dictionopolis where words mean more than their placement in a sentence. Milo, lost in a place called Expectations asks the "Whether" man what kind of place it is: "Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not." (For each of the selected quotes, I will illustrate my own personal embodiment of the underlying thesis: here's the first. At work, not only are we physically moving to another location, but several people are in line for promotions. All employees are up in arms: the expect to be chosen for advancement and they expect their new office space will be better than what they've had for years. None of them regards themselves as prime movers; they expect to be taken care of, not to make their own success. Lesson One for "Everyman"Milo.) People who live in Expectations must be first cousins to the Lethargarians who live in the Doldrums.

Anyone who has had to edit office memorandum will identify with Faintly Macabre, the Which/Witch who cautions Milo: " ... people today use as many words as they cn and think themselves very wise for doing so. For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often worse to use too many."

The plot, if there is one in this allegory, centers around the king of Dictionopolis, Azaz, and his counterpart in Digitopolis, the Mathemagician, and how they came to ignore the wisdom of the princesses Rhyme and Reason who opined that words and numbers were of equal value and who as a result were exiled to the Castle in the Air. While en route to rescue and release the princesses, Milo attends Azaz's banquet where the king boasts:

A literary must for all ! This should be required reading for all children ! Fantastic story telling will drive your imagination !