Celebrating 50 Years of The Phantom Tollbooth with a Richly Annotated Edition!

THE ANNOTATED NORTON JUSTER

PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
Illustrated by
JULESFEIFFER

A N N OtaT ions b y L eonard S . M ar C us

Chapter excerpt

Page 101
1. Ah, the open road!
The Humbugs zest for travel and adventure echoes
that of The Wind in the Willows Mr. Toad, who, showing
off his new horse-drawn caravan, tells his friends,
Theres life for you, embodied in that little cart. The
open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common,
the hedgerows, the rolling downs! . . . Here to-day, up
and off to somewhere else to-morrow! (chapter 2,
p. 29).

Page 102
2. STRAIGHT AHEAD TO POINT OF VIEW
As improved transportation options allowed tourists
and other travelers to venture ever deeper into
wilderness terrain, much thought was given to how
best they might maximize the experience. According
to historian Peter J. Schmitt: In 1898, geologist
Nathaniel Shaler noted that pushing against the winds
in open country or peering from a mountain top
virtually precluded spiritual contact with nature.
Shaler found it difficult to focus on single themes when
he was surrounded by beauty. In The Landscape As a
Means of Culture, he laid out for readers of The Atlantic
Monthly a scheme to limit the field of vision by
scientific principles, to insure that he could best see
into the heart of things (Peter J. Schmitt, Back to
Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 14647). By
the middle of the twentieth century, roadside viewing
points could be found along scenic routes throughout
the United States.

3. Remarkable view
Norton Juster (right) and a fellow sightseer stopping
to enjoy the view at the Grand Canyon, summer of
1949.

4. for standing directly in front of him . . . was

another boy just about his age, whose feet were easily
three feet off the ground.
This new alter ego of Milosone of Justers
favorite charactershas his own point of view about
everything, literally and otherwise, including the most
sensible way for a child to grow and mature. While
Lewis Carroll before him satirized the simplistic model
of child development implied in the unidirectional
catchphrase growing up, Juster here gives the matter
his own utterly original, and playful, twist.

Page 104
5. if Christmas trees were people
Although both the authors parents were Jewish, the
Juster children received Christmas presents. This was in
no small part due to the fact that one of Minnie Justers
sisters was married to an Irishman, the young Nortons
uncle Bill, a genial man whom Juster appreciated as
much for his candor as for his company. Bill would
often escort Norton to the dentists office. When the
latter asked, Will it hurt? Bill, unlike the other adults
he knew, would tell him exactly what to expect.

6. Well . . . in my family everyone is born in the air

This passage recalls one from the Laputa section of
Gullivers Travels: There was a most ingenious architect
who had contrived a new method for building houses,
by beginning at the roof, and working downwards to
the foundation, which he justified to me by the like
practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the
spider (part 3, chapter 5, p. 172).

Page 105
7. In my family we all start on the ground
In the Final Typed Draft at the Lilly Library, this
passage reads: Im only ten, but in my family . . . Juster
crossed out ten and inserted nine in its place. At a
later stage, he decided it best simply not to specify
Milos age (Lilly Library, box 5, folder 64).
8. Why, when youre fifteen things wont look at all
the way they did when you were ten
While Alecs observation is literally true, it also
alludes to the concept, evidently foreign to his part of
the world, of child and adolescent developmentthe
notion that from infancy through early adulthood all
individuals pass through the same sequence of stages in
their growth with respect to bodily strength and selfmastery, cognitive functioning, emotional maturity, ego
development, and moral awareness. Sigmund Freud,
G. Stanley Hall, Jean Piaget, Arnold Gesell, Erik
Erikson, and Lawrence Kohlberg are among the
twentieth-century theorists who made significant
contributions to the study of child and adolescent
development.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright 1961, copyright renewed 1989 by Norton Juster
Illustrations copyright 1961, copyright renewed 1989 by Jules Feiffer
Introduction and notes copyright 2011 by Leonard S. Marcus
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States
by Epstein & Carroll Associates, Inc., distributed by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1961
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
For picture credits, please see page 273.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Juster, Norton.
The annotated Phantom tollbooth / by Norton Juster ; illustrations by Jules Feiffer ;
introduction and notes by Leonard Marcus. 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-375-85715-7 (trade) ISBN 978-0-375-95715-4 (lib. bdg.)
1. Juster, Norton. Phantom tollbooth. I. Feiffer, Jules. II. Marcus, Leonard S. III. Title.
PS3560.U8P47 2011
813'.54dc22
2011013174
MANUFACTURED IN CHINA
October 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Annotated Edition
Random House Childrens Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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