The Phantom Tollbooth

We've just finished listening to The Phantom Tollbooth on audiobook, and I am in love with this book now that I've heard it again from an adult perspective. And although the book has plenty for adults to chuckle about, it captivated Carbon as well with it's wild and crazy adventures and wacky characters. Oddly enough, this book has a checkered history for me and the kids:

1. I received two copies of it for one of my birthdays, and was too young to realize that saying "but I already have this!" was rude. So I was shushed and told I'd been rude, and that emotion became associated with the book in my mind.

2. Carbon was given a copy as a gift and then somehow lost it. I hate losing things - and it was that same book that I remembered being embarrassed about as a young child myself!

But we got the audiobook from the library and listened to it in the car this week, and it's a wonderful fable about learning and life. Just look at these quotes from the book:

Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in a pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth


Goals
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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

And remember, also, added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Imagination
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... for one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is that many of the things which can never be, often are. You see it's very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know that it's there, but you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Insults
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A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Learning
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But it's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters.
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Mistakes
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You must never feel badly about making mistakes, explained Reason quietly, as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Time
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Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.

-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth