As reported by Deadline, author Norton Juster—best known for writing iconic and beloved children’s books The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot And The Line—has died. Juster’s death was confirmed by his publisher, Penguin Random House, and an NPR report says he died from complications related to a recent stroke. He was 91.
Juster was born in Brooklyn in 1929, following in the footsteps of his father and brother (who were both architects) by studying city planning and architecture in college. He joined the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps in the ‘50s, where he began writing and illustrating stories to pass the time. After leaving the military, Juster worked as an architect and was able to combine his two interests when he received a grant to write “a book on cities for children” (as he puts it in this NPR piece). Unfortunately, after ending up “waist-deep in stacks of 3-by-5 notecards, exhausted and dispirited,” Juster realized he didn’t want to write a children’s book about cities and decided to write something that would appeal to the sort of “quiet, introverted, and moody” kid that he had been.
From there, Juster began writing a book about a perpetually bored and disinterested boy named Milo who returns home from school one day and finds a mysterious package containing a map of a place called “The Lands Beyond” and a small tollbooth. From there he embarks on a pun-filled adventure with a literal watchdog that is both utterly delightful and casually educational—not just in the sense that it teaches kids a lot of exciting new words and ideas, but that it actually makes learning about that stuff fun. That book, The Phantom Tollbooth, is now regarded as an absolute classic of children’s literature, having sold millions of copies and been translated into several other languages. It was also adapted into a Chuck Jones animated film, though Juster himself wasn’t a fan of it (in 2011, he told The A.V. Club that Jones had treated the book “like the Holy Grail” and refused to change anything from the text even if it would’ve made for a better movie).
The Phantom Tollbooth was actually Jones’ second adaptation of a Juster book, the other being The Dot And The Line: A Romance In Lower Mathematics. The book, which was published in 1963, is about a straight line that falls in love with a dot, only to find out that the dot is in love with a squiggle. Looking to better himself, the line learns how to bend, changing his shape in new and complex ways. In the end, the line impresses the dot with his newfound appreciation for change, while the squiggle is permanently stuck as a jumbled mess, leading to another excellent pun: “To the vector belong the spoils.” Jones’ adaptation (though some say the short was actually directed by longtime Jones collaborator Maurice Noble) went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and—like The Phantom Tollbooth—has become a staple of classrooms.
Juster’s other works include 2005's The Hello, Goodbye Window and its 2008 sequel, Sourpuss And Sweetie Pie, both of which (as he explained in that same A.V. Club interview) were inspired by his granddaughter. Also, despite writing one of the most highly regarded and generally beloved children’s books of all time, Juster continued working as an architect until he retired.
25 Comments
Probably my favorite book growing up. I loved how absurdist it was.
Anyone else always think the dot was a hussy who wasn’t worth it, even as a kid?
She had, like, zero dimension!
maybe you have a point there.
i really, really wish i had read this book when i was a kid, i was the perfect audience for it & someone gave me a copy of it…but the idea that a “tollbooth” could be a toy that a child would play with just bored me to death & i never got beyond the first couple of pages. i know, i know. i also could never get passed the fact that mrs. little gave birth to a mouse so while i adored “charlotte’s web,” i couldn’t get into “stuart little.”
What about Ms Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, did that fly with your picky childhood tastes?
Personally, I’m annoyed that NIMH is the only NIH institute with a children’s book. Why can’t we have one for NCI? Maybe one about hyperintelligent tumors that escape and create their own civilization.
i never heard of it when i was a kid.
The illustrations are what drew me in at first. Jules Feiffer got the spirit of it right.
I loved Tollbooth when I was the appropriate age.I always think of the scene where each of them is given an impossible task, like the Bah Humbug has to move a lake with an eyedropper, and Milo has to move a massive sand hill with tweezers. I don’t know why but part of me always thought, “Yeah, that might take him a hundred years, but I could probably do it in a day or so. Sounds sort of fun.” I suppose I was always on the cusp of OCD as a child.
Phantom Tollbooth inspired our son’s name, so a friend custom etched these for us in honor of his birth.
Those are awesome.
WOW!
You named your kid Phantom Tollbooth?
’Tom for short.
‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ meant so much to me as a kid. There were times I almost thought I’d dreamed it, because it had such a feeling of magic about it. Vale, Mr Juster, and thankyou.
It’s refreshing to read an author taking a filmmaker to task for being too slavish in adapting his book. I too found the movie disappointing and, even worse for a Chuck Jones cartoon, dull.I also get a kick out of the fact he didn’t give up his day job.
I saw the Chuck Jones version of A Cricket in Times Square and it was also sort of humdrum. It might be because of those stories lacking a strong foil that Jones wasn’t able to work the same magic as the Warner Brothers shorts and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
I read The Phantom Tollbooth as a kid in 1975 and it blew my tiny mind.
Still my favourite book after all these years.
I remember as a kid, I didn’t read the book but was inspired but the cover to write multiple stories around it. I don’t remember anything about said stories and am even questioning if I ever did read the book but I have great fondness for in nonetheless.
I write poetry, and I teach others about poetry. “The Dot and the Line” is my favorite book about writing, and about all art. Being spontaneous isn’t enough: having a set time to practice the craft will take one far. (There are also some people for whom discipline becomes compulsion, and who surround their art with an illegal drug to break out of the compulsion.)
I had an excellent teacher in sixth grade who, when assigning this book to us, also gave us multiple opportunities to make, build, and explore every character within. My favorite activity was folding paper into The Dodecahedron- I wish I still had it!
I have a number of original production cels from Chuck Jones’s long career, but the most unique is probably this one. The Squiggle is drawn on rice paper to add feathering to the ink, it’s so wild up close.
I didn’t read it when I was child, but when I was 15. My best friends and I shared the books that we had loved which the others of us hadn’t ever read, and as a result I was introduced to some great literature: the Narnia books, The Secret Garden, Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse. It’s never too late to be a child.
Had no idea he was even still around, but sad to hear. I loved The Phantom Tollbooth as a kid and still have the copy my mom bought for me 20+ years later.