THE ANNOTATED PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH

NORTON JUSTER

Illustrated by JULES FEIFFER

A N N O T A 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

Page 1011. “Ah, the open road!”

The Humbug’s zest for travel and adventure echoesthat of The Wind in the Willows’ Mr. Toad, who, showingoff his new horse-drawn caravan, tells his friends,“ ‘There’s life for you, embodied in that little cart. Theopen road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common,the hedgerows, the rolling downs! . . . Here to-day, upand off to somewhere else to-morrow!’ ” (chapter 2, p. 29).

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Page 1022. “STRAIGHT AHEAD TO POINT OF VIEW”

As improved transportation options allowed touristsand other travelers to venture ever deeper intowilderness terrain, much thought was given to how best they might maximize the experience. According to historian Peter J. Schmitt: “In 1898, geologistNathaniel Shaler noted that pushing against the windsin open country or peering from a mountain topvirtually precluded ‘spiritual contact’ with nature.Shaler found it difficult to focus on single themes whenhe was surrounded by beauty. In ‘The Landscape As aMeans of Culture,’ he laid out for readers of The AtlanticMonthly a scheme to limit the field of vision byscientific principles, to insure that he could best seeinto ‘the heart of things’ ” (Peter J. Schmitt, Back toNature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America, NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 146–47). Bythe middle of the twentieth century, roadside viewingpoints could be found along scenic routes throughoutthe United States.

3. “Remarkable view”Norton Juster (right) and a fellow sightseer stopping

to enjoy the view at the Grand Canyon, summer of1949.

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4. for standing directly in front of him . . . was another boy just about his age, whose feet were easilythree feet off the ground.

This new alter ego of Milo’s—one of Juster’s favorite characters—has his own point of view abouteverything, literally and otherwise, including the mostsensible way for a child to grow and mature. WhileLewis Carroll before him satirized the simplistic modelof child development implied in the unidirectionalcatchphrase “growing up,” Juster here gives the matterhis own utterly original, and playful, twist.

Page 1045. “if Christmas trees were people”

Although both the author’s parents were Jewish, theJuster children received Christmas presents. This was inno small part due to the fact that one of Minnie Juster’ssisters was married to an Irishman, the young Norton’suncle Bill, a genial man whom Juster appreciated asmuch for his candor as for his company. Bill wouldoften escort Norton to the dentist’s office. When thelatter asked, “Will it hurt?” Bill, unlike the other adultshe 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

Gulliver’s Travels: “There was a most ingenious architectwho 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 likepractice of those two prudent insects, the bee and thespider” (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, thispassage reads: “I’m only ten, but in my family . . .” Justercrossed out “ten” and inserted “nine” in its place. At alater stage, he decided it best simply not to specifyMilo’s age (Lilly Library, box 5, folder 64).

8. “Why, when you’re fifteen things won’t look at allthe way they did when you were ten”

While Alec’s observation is literally true, it alsoalludes to the concept, evidently foreign to his part ofthe world, of child and adolescent development—thenotion that from infancy through early adulthood allindividuals pass through the same sequence of stages intheir growth with respect to bodily strength and self- mastery, cognitive functioning, emotional maturity, egodevelopment, and moral awareness. Sigmund Freud,G. Stanley Hall, Jean Piaget, Arnold Gesell, ErikErikson, and Lawrence Kohlberg are among the twentieth- century theorists who made significantcontributions to the study of child and adolescentdevelopment.

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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 author’s 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 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 Children’s 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.

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'.54—dc222011013174

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