Critics compared it to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz New Yorker critic Emily Maxwell cited Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, writing: “As Pilgrim’s Progress is concerned with the awakening of the sluggardly spirit, The Phantom Tollbooth is concerned with the awakening of the lazy mind.” British author Diana Wynne Jones later spoke of reading her copy so often it fell apart: “It didn’t occur to us that it might be about something. Juster drew inspiration from a wide range of his childhood favourites, including The Wind in the Willows and the Marx Brothers.Īfter a slow start to sales – Juster described his mother Minnie “terrorising” bookshop owners to put the novel on display – The Phantom Tollbooth became a bestseller after several glowing reviews. Following a bored boy named Milo who drives through a magic tollbooth into the troubled Kingdom of Wisdom and discovers his love of learning, the 1961 novel was filled with puns and wordplay. The two housemates would work together on The Phantom Tollbooth, with Juster writing and Feiffer illustrating. After studying architecture, he enrolled in the US Navy where, while bored, he would write his first children’s story, an unpublished satirical fairytale, for which he was reprimanded by his commanding officer.Īfter three years in the navy, Juster was discharged and began living with the cartoonist Jules Feiffer in 1960. The author of 12 books, Juster was born to two Jewish migrants in New York in 1929.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |