A Genteel Black Hole

Title: The Phantom Tollbooth
Author: Norton Juster
Year: 1961
Country: USA

Format: E-book
Read: 17-29 December 2025
First reading

The Phantom Tollbooth is a children’s fantasy by Norton Juster, with charming illustrations by Jules Feiffer. Milo is a chronically bored kid. Then one day he receives a mysterious gift: a magical turnpike tollbooth. The tollbooth transports him to the Kingdom of Wisdom, a whimsical land of puns, where he ends up on a quest to rescue Princesses Rhyme and Reason. Accompanied by his new friends — a Watchdog called Tock and a grumpy beetle called Humbug — Milo encounters a host of eccentric characters who collectively teach him how to find joy in learning.

My inner child was delighted by this book. I’ve been a fan of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as long as I can remember, and The Phantom Tollbooth has similar vibes: a child is transported to a surreal land full of baffling eccentrics and outlandish wordplay.

However Tollbooth has a more obvious moral than Alice. It aims to get kids excited about knowledge for knowledge’s sake — a noble cause! But my adult self tends to prefer children’s stories that are a bit less on-the-nose. (I spent much of this year becoming a fan of Tove Jansson’s Moomins.) So while I delighted in the wordplay (a car that runs on silence: it goes without saying), the Kingdom of Wisdom probably won’t linger in my imagination the way Wonderland does.

It’s too bad I didn’t read this when I was Milo’s age.