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When he left the Navy, Norton Juster began writing a non-fiction book about urban planning. As an outlet from the grueling work, though, he spent his free time concocting the imaginative scenes that later became The Phantom Tollbooth. One publisher’s advance later, he gave up on the scholarly work and finished The Phantom Tollbooth instead. And we’re all better off for it.

Part Alice in Wonderland, part secular Pilgrim’s Progress, The Phantom Tollbooth takes ten year-old Milo on a journey out of boredom and into a wild world of Watchdogs (dogs made from big watches), the Mathemagician (who rules over the city Digitopolis), King Azaz the Unabridged (who rules over Dictionopolis), and creatures like the Awful Dynne, who collects the noisy sounds of the world, and the Lethargarians, who sit around and do nothing all day.

It’s a bright adventure into the creative possibilities of the mind. In Dictionopolis and Digitopolis Milo discovers the value of words and numbers; on the Mountain of Ignorance he learns that knowledge can fight off inattention and indulgence; in the Doldrums, he avoids ennui by thinking; and through it all, he discovers that a little attention reveals wondrous details in everything around him. All told it’s an episodic allegory that feels like the whole wonder of grade school in a few hundred pages.

But the real pleasure of it is the whip-smart wordplay. We barely catch it as children, but Juster’s physical representations of intangible things—like the very short Officer Shrift, who arrests people without giving them a chance—introduce young readers to multiple layers of meaning. And as adults, there’s a laugh, a groan, or a tickled “huh!� in every paragraph.

The Phantom Tollbooth isn’t perfect, however. The opening chapters are electric with wit, but the mystery and momentum of the early pages fade into a string of sometimes cumbersomely connected scenes, as if Juster’s clever ideas were simply lined up in a row. And, not all puns are created equal. (Still, they're puns, and we have to love them).

But these are tiny complaints. Every child should read The Phantom Tollbooth; it’s a bit of a lesson book on how to live. In the interview at the end of the audiobook (read by David Hyde Pierce), Juster says that many of the demons in the story—like the terrible Trivium, who waylays us with inane tasks—reflect the challenges that he struggles with in his writing. And if we all do as well as Milo does, then we’ll surely live happier, fuller lives.

Do I recommend it? Yes. Read it at different times over the course of your life. You’ll notice different things.
Would I teach it? It would be fun. It’s young in spirit, and it might serve as fresh contrast to texts exploring allegory or the image of the road.
Lasting impressions: I first read The Phantom Tollbooth in the third grade, and though I only remembered excerpts from it before revisiting it recently, looking back at it now, I wonder if it was the most formative experience of my childhood.