the annotated phantom tollbooth chapter excerpt

8/4/2019 The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth Chapter Excerpt

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THE ANNOTATEDPHANTOM TOLLBOOTHNORTON JUSTER

Illustrated by

JULES FEIFFER

A N N O TA T I O N S B Y L E O N A R D S . M A R C U S

Celebrating 50 Years of THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH with a Richly Annotated Edition!

CHAPTER EXCERPT


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Page 1022. 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 aMeans 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.

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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.


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Page 1045. 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).

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Page 1057. 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 ofthe 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 self-

mastery, 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.

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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 imaginationor 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 JusterIllustrations 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

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us atwww.randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataJuster, 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'.54dc222011013174

MANUFACTURED IN CHINAOctober 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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the annotated phantom tollbooth chapter excerpt

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