Through the Phantom Tollbooth with Norton Juster

Shopping Cart Week, II:

Amherst Celebrity Juster

Like you I'll bet, I had the unique and magical, private, literally wonder-ful experience entering another world of logic and absurdity to absorb Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth's fantastic images, clever ideas, and delightful illustrations.

Only after I left town for college did I learn that this much-beloved author is by training actually an architect and planner, and has been on the faculty in the old home town, professor emeritus of design at Hampshire College.

I was eleven years old when I first read the book.  We were in Rome for spring holiday when I stepped into the incredible Red Lion Bookshop (then a block or two to the right off the bottom step at the Spanish Steps in Rome; later around the corner from its original spot), where in a number of visits I found Penguins a-plenty, acquired several Moomin-books and the entire Narnia Chronicles, and stepped out to take the first steps on an amazing mind journey with Phantom Tollbooth in hand.

The Portal

We now have a great local organization in town, Reader to Reader, that works to provide books and learning materials to underprivileged schools and libraries in the USA and around the world.  Professor Juster endorsed this tremendous organization and its literacy mission from the outset, and has been an outspoken supporter all along.

My connection and fond memory of Norton is from our conversation at founder Dave Mazor's 2010 event for Reader to Reader:

My #1 daughter was along with me that day.  She was approaching seventeen, and her reading of Phantom Tollbooth was in the past, but vividly so.  As I spoke with Norton, she came by and I made the introduction - and I watched her beautiful face transform from teen jade to pre-teen, wide-eyed purity: "Oh, WOW!! YOU wrote the Phantom Tollbooth??  REALLY????"  He was kind and funny as we traded a few dear favorite memories from the book, although no doubt this sort of thing must happen to him all the time.  A gracious and tender man.

It is hard to imagine many other books that can elicit such swooning favor, such longing for the transport and possibility of childhood.

Next stop: through the Tollbooth in Milo's toy car...

I've run into Norton pushing a shopping cart in Stop & Shop, raised a glass to see him honored at a Children's Book Illustrators' event at Rich Michelson's fabulous gallery in Northampton, and seen him line up on my parents' side of the street in a recent (2005) battle over the structure of town government (Amherst went, to its detriment, for Town Manager form rather than Mayor - and has been sliding downhill ever since).

Long Live the Mayor: Mayor Juster of Nonsense-opolis

Norton Juster is a local treasure of worldwide renown.  He puts Amherst, MA - our never-ending Nonsense-opolis - on the map.

Read a fine essay in NYR by Michael Chabon, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1961 publication of "The Phantom Tollbooth," and this story of how the book came to be; listen to the author's tale of "My Accidental Masterpiece from a radio interview on NPR's All Things Considered.

Where Am I ??