The Phantom Tollbooth

Summary

The Phantom Tollbooth is a comic fantasy about Milo, a boy so bored that nothing seems worth doing, learning, or even noticing. One afternoon he finds a large package in his room containing a toy tollbooth, a map of unfamiliar lands, coins and a rule book. Having nothing better to do, he drives his small electric car through the booth and finds himself on a road in a strange country. He passes the land of Expectations, where the Whether Man talks in circles, and drifts into the Doldrums, a gray place where the sleepy Lethargians have made thinking against the law. He is rescued by Tock, a watchdog whose body is a ticking alarm clock, and escapes only by starting to think. They reach Dictionopolis, a city of words, where letters and words are sold at the Word Market, and fall in with the boastful Humbug and the Spelling Bee. A brawl lands Milo in a dungeon, where the Which, Faintly Macabre, explains the kingdom's sorrow. The old King of Wisdom had two sons, King Azaz the Unabridged of Dictionopolis, who prizes words, and the Mathemagician of Digitopolis, who prizes numbers, and two adopted daughters, the princesses Rhyme and Reason, who settled every dispute. When the princesses ruled that words and numbers are equally important, the brothers banished them to the Castle in the Air, and the kingdom has had neither rhyme nor reason since. At a royal banquet where the guests literally eat their words, Milo volunteers to rescue the princesses, and Azaz gives him a box of all the words he knows. The travelers meet Alec Bings, who sees through things; Chroma the Great, whose orchestra plays the colors of the world, which Milo throws into chaos by conducting it himself; Dr. Dischord and the awful DYNNE; and the Soundkeeper of the Silent Valley. They jump to the Island of Conclusions and must swim back through the Sea of Knowledge. The Dodecahedron leads them to Digitopolis, its number mine and its staircase to Infinity, where Milo argues the Mathemagician into consenting to the quest. In the Mountains of Ignorance they escape the Everpresent Wordsnatcher, the faceless Terrible Trivium, the Demon of Insincerity, the Gelatinous Giant and the Senses Taker, reach the Castle in the Air, and bring the princesses down as Tock flies them clear. The armies of Wisdom rout the demons, the brothers are reconciled, and the kingdom celebrates. Milo drives home to find he has been gone about an hour. The next day the tollbooth has vanished, leaving a note for him, and he discovers that his own world is full of things to do. The book was published in 1961 by Epstein & Carroll, distributed by Random House, with drawings by Jules Feiffer.

Top Lessons

• Boredom is a way of not looking

  Milo begins the book thinking the world is dull, and he drifts into the Doldrums because he has stopped thinking at all. By the end the same room and the same town seem full of things to learn and do. Juster suggests that boredom lives more in the bored person than in the world, and that attention and curiosity are habits to be practiced.

• Words and numbers need each other

  Azaz thinks words are everything and the Mathemagician thinks numbers are everything, and their quarrel drives away Rhyme and Reason. The princesses had ruled that both are equally important. The story teaches that the different kinds of learning belong together and that knowledge without judgment becomes foolishness.

• Do not jump to conclusions

  Milo, Tock and the Humbug find themselves on the Island of Conclusions just by jumping there, and getting back means a long swim through the Sea of Knowledge. Juster turns a common saying into a real place to show how easy it is to decide things too quickly and how much work it takes to undo a hasty judgment.

• The enemies of learning

  The demons of the Mountains of Ignorance are not monsters with claws but things like the Terrible Trivium, who keeps people busy with pointless jobs, and the Senses Taker, who wastes their time with forms and questions. The book teaches children to recognize the quiet habits, like wasting time and never asking why, that keep people ignorant.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The book is not about illness. Its opening, though, gives an unusually exact child's-eye portrait of apathy: Milo cannot see the point of learning, going anywhere or doing anything, and the Doldrums and the Lethargians, who spend the day not thinking and not laughing, make that state into a place. This is boredom and the old vice of sloth or acedia rather than melancholia as a disease, and Juster's cure is attention, effort and curiosity. Juster is reported to have had a form of synesthesia, which some readers connect with Chroma's orchestra of colors; treat that link as a reading.

• Chapter 1

  Milo's opening listlessness: everything seems a waste of time and nothing interests him.

• Chapter 2

  The Doldrums, where the Lethargians have outlawed thinking and laughing; Milo leaves only when he starts to think.