The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster, 1961
A bored boy drives a toy tollbooth into a land where words and numbers are literal places, and boredom turns out to be the thing worth escaping.
Norton Juster
Juster trained as an architect and had a grant to write a book about cities; he procrastinated and wrote this instead. It was his first book.
Feels like wonder, adventure and humor.
The case for believing that a housefly's wings can move the world.
You may not see it now,“ said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo’s puzzled face, ”but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in the pond; and whenever you’re sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it’s much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer. Books by Norton Juster
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