The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster, 1961
Fantasy Young adultContemporary fictionLiterary fiction
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.
Feels like wonder, humor and curiosity. About adventure, friendship and society.
A page from the book
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. 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.
Books that feel like this
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- What is The Phantom Tollbooth like?
- Feels like wonder, humor and curiosity. About adventure, friendship and society.
- What should I read after The Phantom Tollbooth?
- If you liked The Phantom Tollbooth, try The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), The Lost Hero (Rick Riordan) and Northern Lights (Philip Pullman).
A taste of the feed
A creation story for anyone who suspects it was a mistake.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy · Douglas Adams
The friend who makes your strangeness feel like a shared joke.
I have lightning and wind powers,“ Jason reminded him. ”Piper can turn beautiful and charm people into giving her BMWs. You’re no more a freak than we are. And, hey, maybe you can fly, too. Like jump off a building and yell ‘Flame on!’“ Leo snorted. ”If I did that, you would see a flaming kid falling to his death, and I would be yelling something a little stronger than ‘Flame on!
The Lost Hero · Rick Riordan
A gift that looks like a compass but measures something else entirely.
It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive... Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn’t even guess what they meant.
Northern Lights · Philip Pullman
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed