"The Phantom Tollbooth": Crafting a literary classic cbsnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cbsnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Juster s classic book The Phantom Tollbooth tells the tale of a bored young boy, Milo, who is transported to a world of wonder when he drives through a magical tollbooth that has arrived without warning at his house. Photo: AP
Norton Juster, the celebrated children s author who fashioned a world of adventure and punning punditry in the million-selling classic
The Phantom Tollbooth and remained true to his wide-eyed self in such favourites as
The Dot And The Line and
Stark Naked, has died at 91.
Juster s death was confirmed on Tuesday by a spokesperson for Random House Children s Books, who did not immediately provide details. Juster s friend and fellow author Mo Willems tweeted on Tuesday that Juster ran out of stories” and died peacefully” the night before.
‘At birth they should give every child a PhD’: Norton Juster at home in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2011. Photograph: Getty Images
Norton Juster, who has died aged 91, wrote The Phantom Tollbooth, which became a classic for children of all ages. It tells the story of a boy named Milo, who is both bored and boring. One day he finds a package in his bedroom, from which he assembles the flat-packed eponymous tollbooth, and through which he proceeds in his toy electric car.
He finds himself enmeshed in an ongoing conflict between Azaz the king of Dictionopolis and his brother the Mathemagician, ruler of Digitopolis. Tasked with rescuing the princesses Rhyme and Reason, Milo – accompanied by Tock, a watchdog who sports an alarm clock on his torso – begins an epic journey through a world filled with wordplay. Juster recalled his own childhood, in which he experienced synaesthesia. “I couldn’t do numbers if I didn’t see co
The Phantom Tollbooth: 4 Jewish Lessons
Norton Juster, the author of one of my favorite books, has died at the age of 91.
Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, Norton Juster recalled living in his family’s book-lined home. His parents Samuel and Minnie were Jewish immigrants from Romania and had a large collection of Yiddish-language books. “Every day was an adventure in semantic mayhem,”
he later recalled. “I just loved the language and the way the words sounded.”
Norton enjoyed writing children’s stories but for much of this professional life that took a back seat to his career as an architect. Norton eventually wrote around a dozen works; the best known is his 1961 children’s novel
Author, architect Norton Juster dies at 91 at Northampton home amherstbulletin.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from amherstbulletin.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.