Norton Juster

Norton Juster was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, to Jewish immigrant parents; his father, born in Romania, became an architect through a correspondence course. Juster studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1952, and then city planning at the University of Liverpool in England. In 1954 he joined the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Navy. To fight boredom during his service he began writing stories, and while posted at the Brooklyn Navy Yard he met the cartoonist Jules Feiffer while taking out the trash. After leaving the navy he worked for an architectural firm in Manhattan. The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), with drawings by Feiffer, tells of Milo, a bored boy who drives a toy car through a magic tollbooth into a land of words and numbers, where he sets out to rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason. It became a children's classic. He followed it with The Dot and the Line (1963), a mathematical romance. Juster taught architecture and environmental design at Hampshire College from 1970 to 1992 and co-founded an architectural firm in Massachusetts. He died in 2021.

Norton Juster is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Born to Jewish parents; his personal beliefs are not well documented. Source: Wikipedia