Review: The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I purchased this book for $1.00 at The Strand.

I remember watching the movie in elementary school and that all of my classmates had already seen and loved it. I don't remember much else from that time in terms of the plot of the movie, so I really can't say how it compares to the book having read it about twenty years later.

This is quite a sweet children's book with an interesting cast of characters (interesting in the sense that their wordplay origins are interesting...they are all pretty flat characters). There are definitely many dated references, but it feels like it holds up surprisingly well for a book that is over fifty years old. Wordplay is a major part of the story, but I wonder how seriously children reading this book take some of the statements made in the book that are not meant to be facts.

Maybe if I had read this book as a child, I would have some feelings of nostalgia, but all-in-all, I didn't find this book to be a standout.

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