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{{
{{Multiple Works Need Separate Pages}}
[[File:ThePhantomTollBooth.jpg|frame]]▼
{{Infobox book
| title = The Phantom Tollbooth
| caption =
| author = Norton Juster
| central theme =
| elevator pitch =
| genre = [[Trapped in Another World]]
| publication date = August 12, 1961
| wiki URL = https://thephantomtollbooth.fandom.com/wiki/The_Phantom_Tollbooth_Wiki
| wiki name = The Phantom Tollbooth Wiki
}}
{{quote|
''When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd bothered. Nothing really interested him -- least of all the things that should have.'' }}
[[Kid Hero|Milo]] is a bored little boy. Then one day he comes home from school (he's a latch-key kid) and discovers [[Call to Adventure|a very singular box in his room]]. Within are the pieces to construct a toy tollbooth. Having nothing better to do, he follows the included instructions, drives through the tollbooth in his toy car, and suddenly finds himself driving down a road under a distant sky.
Along his surprising journey he meets such colorful characters as King Azaz the Unabridged, King of Dictionopolis and the realm of words; the Mathemagician, ruler of Digitopolis and everything number-related; Tock, the loyal watch dog (literally); the oversized Spelling Bee; the shifty-but-lovable Humbug; Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked Which; Chroma the Great, conductor of the sunrise; the Soundkeeper, who greedily keeps all sound to herself; and the sadly missing Princesses Rhyme and Reason, locked in the Castle in the Air and [[
There is also
As of Summer 2010, a new film version
* [[Achievements in Ignorance]]▼
{{tropelist}}
▲* [[Achievements in Ignorance]]{{context}}
* [[An Aesop]]: The page quote opens the book. At the end, {{spoiler|the tollbooth vanishes, but on reflection, and looking around, Milo wonders how he would have found the time to go back even if it hadn't, when there was so much to do right there}}.
* [[Affably Evil]]: The Terrible Trivium is a polite, refined gentleman -- so polite and refined, you wouldn't mind doing a few minor, insignificant tasks for him. Heck, you can spare a few thousand years, right?
** Something of a self-referential [[Truth in Television]], since Juster has said he wrote the book while he was supposed to be writing a different book about city architecture for kids.
* [[Agree to Disagree]]{{context}}
* [[All
* [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]{{context}}
* [[Backstory]]{{context}}
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Just when the terrible creatures of Ignorance are about to descend on Milo, Tock, the Humbug and the princesses, {{spoiler|the cavalry comes in the form of damn near ''every single person'' our heroes came across on their journey.}}
* [[The Blank]]: The Terrible Trivium, and in the movies Rhyme and Reason.
* [[A Boy and His X]]: A boy and his
* [[The Cavalry]]:
* [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]: The cities of Reality and Illusions (I guess?).
* [[
* [[Divided We Fall]]{{context}}
* [[
* [[Exact Words]]: When Milo asks the Mathemagician to show him the biggest number there is, the Mathemagician shows him a number 3 that's twice his own height. Milo corrects himself and asks for the ''longest'' number there is, and the Mathemagician shows him a number 8 that's as wide as the 3 was high.
** Earlier, when Milo is asked what kind of meal he'd like, he asks for "something light" and gets platters filled with literal light. Then he asks for "a square meal" and gets blocks of food that taste awful.
* [[Fantasy World Map]]{{context}}
* [[Forbidden Zone]]{{context}}
* [[Fun
* [[Golden Mean Fallacy]]: Embodied by the Triple Demons of Compromise: one tall and thin, one short and fat, and the third "exactly like the other two".
* [[Grows
* [[Home, Sweet Home]]{{context}}
* [[Hurricane of Puns]]{{context}}
* [[Insane Troll Logic]]: Oh, so, so much
{{quote|
'''Humbug:''' Where would you find a beaver that big?
'''Dodecahedron:''' I'm sure I don't know, but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him. }}
* [[It Was a Gift]]: Several people Milo meets give him gifts that prove useful against the demons.
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*** Transferring water from one well to another, with an eyedropper, and
*** Digging through a cliffside with a needle.
* [[Judge, Jury, and Executioner|Judge, Jury and Jailer]]: Officer Shrift. Fortunately for Milo, he only cares about throwing people in prison, not about keeping them there.
{{quote|
* [[Kangaroo Court]]: Officer Shrift runs one of these.
* [[The Kingdom]]{{context}}
* [[Lovable Coward]]: The Humbug.
* [[Never Tell Me the Odds]]: The quest was ''literally impossible''--[[Achievements in Ignorance|but since nobody told Milo, it became possible]].
* [[Non
* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: The Senses Taker.
* [[Oxymoronic Being]]{{context}}
* [[The Quest]]{{context}}
* [[Painting the Frost
* [[Parental Bonus]]: If you're under the age of 12, it's a given that you're not getting about a fifth of the jokes.
** The conflict between Dictionopolis and Digitopolis was Juster's jab at the "Two Cultures" mentality described by C. P. Snow; the position taken by Rhyme and Reason is much like that of Snow himself (who was both a physicist and a novelist).
* [[Portal Slam]]{{context}}
* [[Punny Name]]: Pretty much everybody.{{context}}
* [["Reading Is Cool" Aesop]]{{context}}
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: Feiffer drew the book's pictures because he happened to be living in the same apartment building as Juster at the time of the book's writing.
** And the origin of the book was that Juster had gotten a grant to write a nonfiction book on architecture but he had an idea for a story that he had to get out of his head. The text describing the cities of Reality and Illusion are the only surviving bits of what he wrote before he got sidetracked (and sidetracking you from what you're supposed to be doing is what the Terrible Trivium does). He reportedly has tried to pay back the grant several times, but can't find anyone who will acknowledge it.
** In the book, the Whether Man is a portrait/caricature of Juster, evidently revenge for including the Triple Demons of Compromise.
* [[Shaped Like Itself]]: The tollbooth package; "for its size it was larger than almost any other big package of smaller dimension that he'd ever seen."
* [[Shout
* [[Stealth Pun]]: Among other examples, the Everpresent Wordsnatcher, a bird that lives to misinterpret what others say, is actually native to the land of Context, "but it's such a nasty place, I prefer to spend all my time out of it."
** Canby's puns are as stealthy as can be.
* [[
** [[Trapped in Another World]]
* [[Wonder Child]]: The princesses were foundlings.
* [[World of Symbolism]]: With the tollbooth itself guarding the entrance.
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* [[Writers Cannot Do Math]]: An in-universe example. Of course, the point was that there ''is'' no greatest possible number, but when Milo is for asked the highest number he can think of, he replies, "nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine". Even if he hadn't known that "quadrillion" comes after "trillion" (and not everyone does), with the "999s" he's doing, it should be obvious to him that the next number is ten trillion.
* [[Always Identical Twins]]: Although they are never described or drawn as such in the book, King Azaz and the Mathemagician are this in the movie. They even have the same voice actor.
* [[The Cameo]]: When Milo is in class and many people are speaking at once, the voice of [[Bugs Bunny]] can be heard. In fact, nearly ''every'' famous voice artist of the day, from Daws Butler to June Foray to Candy Candido gets a bit part somewhere in the film.
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** [[Animated Adaptation]]
* [[Hypocritical Humor]]
{{quote|
* [[Medium Blending]]: Starts out in live-action [[San Francisco]].
* [[Mel Blanc]]: One of the few theatrical feature length films he worked on. As already noted, he performs multiple characters in the film: Officer Shrift, several Lethargians, three royal palace guards, the Word Seller in the market at Dictionopolis, the Dodecahedron, the Demon of Insincerity, and the Overbearing Know-It-All.
* [[Non
* [[Pain
* [[Our Demons Are Different]].
* [[Villain Song]]: "Don't Say There's Nothing to Do in the Doldrums" performed by The Lethargians, a group of sinister lazy slimy creatures (voiced by Mel Blanc and Thurl Ravenscroft).
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Animated Films]]
▲[[Category:Films of the 2010s]]
▲[[Category:Childrens Literature]]
[[Category:Films of the 1970s]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phantom Tollbooth, The}}
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