The Phantom Tollbooth
Yep, that's right. This whole book is an allegory. Wait, what's an allegory again? We're glad you asked. We can understand an allegory as "any writing in verse or prose that has a double meaning. T...
Meals
Meals play an important part in many fantasy stories – just think of the famous tea party in Alice in Wonderland.And if you've read enough fairy tales, you know that eating the food in magical la...
Gifts
Milo receives an important gift in nearly every landmark he hits on his journey through the Lands Beyond. If you've ever read another quest story, you know that this isn't unusual. Everywhere a tra...
The Doldrums
The Doldrums are one of the first places Milo visits in the Lands Beyond, so we get the feeling they're probably pretty important. When he first arrives, her meets the Lethargarians, a group of col...
The Castle in the Air
The phrase "castle in the air" is often used to describe a fabulous daydream that someone's having about a fantastic future. The castles people fantasize about aren't based in reality. After all, t...
The Tollbooth
In several of the interviews Norton Juster gave to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth, he mentioned one big worry he had: that twenty-first-century readers won't know what...