Read the Book, Perform the Musical…
Illustration by Jules Feiffer
It has been fifty years—and millions of readers—since the world was first introduced to Milo and his adventures in the Lands Beyond with Tock, the Humbug, and the captive princesses Rhyme and Reason. The Phantom Tollbooth written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer is a beloved children’s novel and serves as the basis for three musical versions of the story licensed by MTI: THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH JR., and THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH TYA.
Special Editions of the Novel Now Available
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary milestone, Random House has released two special editions of the book as well as a new work by Norton Juster. You can learn more about all three by clicking below:
A Fond Memory
This novel is so widely-read and popular that many renowned authors attribute it as a childhood inspiration. Says New York Times Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon:
I can still, forty years later, remember my first encounters with the following words: macabre, din, dodecahedron, discord, trivium, lethargy. They are all, capitalized and adapted, characters in the novel. Entire phrases, too, found their way into the marbles-sack of my eight-year-old word-hoard: “rhyme and reason,” “easy as falling off a log,” “taking the words right out of your mouth.” To this day when I happen to write those or any other of the words that I remember having first seen in The Phantom Tollbooth, I get a tiny thrill of nostalgia and affection for the wonderful book, and for its author, and for myself when young, and for the world I then lived in.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
You’re in The Doldrums, of course.