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A review by avalinahsbooks
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
3.0
How I read this: free trial of Scribd
I was expecting to really enjoy this kidlit classic, but ended up disappointed. The start was a lot of fun! But then the book rolled into the territory of “a little too many moral lessons hidden in all the puns and adventures”, and I don’t know… Sometimes you just want an adventure for what it is – an adventure.
It’s okay if a story teaches you something – that’s how it should be. But it’s best if it teaches you that something as the conclusion – meanwhile, The Phantom Tollbooth seemed to be teaching something along every step of the way. I think the reason for this is that the book was originally published in 1961 and that was the general format of the story back then – and also, I think some of the values might have just got dated since then.
For example, the whole point of the book is to show the child that even though we learn seemingly meaningless stuff at school, and at the time it doesn’t seem like it will be useful – you never know when you’ll need it. And to some extent, that is true – we do need to learn to spell and do math, but then… Isn’t it that pretty much everyone now agrees that the school system is ridiculously flawed and we all need to move in a new direction..? In that light, a story about how you should “learn things and not ask questions about what the hell it is for” just seems less relevant right now. At the moment, we are TRYING to make the kids ask as many questions as possible! So it just doesn’t fit into the whole big picture anymore. And I think that’s why I didn’t like it as much!
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I was expecting to really enjoy this kidlit classic, but ended up disappointed. The start was a lot of fun! But then the book rolled into the territory of “a little too many moral lessons hidden in all the puns and adventures”, and I don’t know… Sometimes you just want an adventure for what it is – an adventure.
It’s okay if a story teaches you something – that’s how it should be. But it’s best if it teaches you that something as the conclusion – meanwhile, The Phantom Tollbooth seemed to be teaching something along every step of the way. I think the reason for this is that the book was originally published in 1961 and that was the general format of the story back then – and also, I think some of the values might have just got dated since then.
For example, the whole point of the book is to show the child that even though we learn seemingly meaningless stuff at school, and at the time it doesn’t seem like it will be useful – you never know when you’ll need it. And to some extent, that is true – we do need to learn to spell and do math, but then… Isn’t it that pretty much everyone now agrees that the school system is ridiculously flawed and we all need to move in a new direction..? In that light, a story about how you should “learn things and not ask questions about what the hell it is for” just seems less relevant right now. At the moment, we are TRYING to make the kids ask as many questions as possible! So it just doesn’t fit into the whole big picture anymore. And I think that’s why I didn’t like it as much!
Book Blog | Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter