The Phantom Tollbooth

Written by Norton Juster[?] and illustrated by Jules Feiffer[?], The Phantom Tollbooth (1961, Knopf) is a modern-day fairy tale full of wordplay and insight into the human condition.

It tells the story of a bored boy named Milo who drives through a magic tollbooth into the warring kindgoms of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, who quarrel endlessly about the advantages of words versus numbers. His pun-rich travels include trips to Conclusion (you jump there, of course) and the silence-filled Valley of Sound, culminating in an attempt to rescue the princesses named Rhyme and Reason, who are guarded by horrible beasts like the Gross Exaggeration and the Threadbare Excuse.

Brilliantly written and brilliantly illustrated by Feiffer, whose work usually tends toward the adult audience, it remains popular today. It even survived being turned into a second-rate animated movie in 1969—one of the few cartoon flops of Chuck Jones and Mel Blanc.