As reported by Deadline, author Norton Juster – best known for writing iconic and beloved children’s books The Phantom Tollbooth and The point and the line-died. Juster’s death was confirmed by his editor, Penguin Random House, and an NPR report says he died of complications related to a recent stroke. He was 91 years old.
Juster was born in Brooklyn in 1929, following in the footsteps of his father and brother (who were architects), studying urban planning and architecture at college. He joined the Marine Corps of Civil Engineers in the 1950s, where he began to write and illustrate stories to pass the time. After leaving the army, Juster worked as an architect and managed to combine his two interests by receiving a scholarship to write “a book on cities for children” (as he puts in this article NPR) Unfortunately, after ending up “plunged into the waist in stacks of 3 by 5 chips, exhausted and discouraged”, Juster realized that he was not would you like to write a children’s book about cities and decided to write something that appealed to the kind of “quiet, introverted and temperamental” child he had been.
From there, Juster started writing a book about a perpetually bored and disinterested boy named Milo who one day returns home from school and finds a mysterious package containing a map of a place called “The Lands Beyond” and a small toll. From there, he embarks on an adventure full of puns with a literal watchdog who is totally charming and casually educational – not only in the sense that he teaches children many new and exciting words and ideas, but that really makes learning about this things Fun. That book, The Phantom Tollbooth, is now considered an absolute classic in children’s literature, having sold millions of copies and been translated into several other languages. It was also adapted for an animated film by Chuck Jones, although Juster himself was not a fan of him (in 2011, he said The AV Club that Jones treated the book “like the Holy Grail” and refused to change anything in the text, even if it was for a better film).
The Phantom Tollbooth was actually Jones’ second adaptation of a Juster book, the other being The point and the line: a novel in lower mathematics. The book, which was published in 1963, is about a straight line that falls in love with a dot, only to discover that the dot is in love with a scribble. Seeking to improve, the line learns to bend, changing its shape in new and complex ways. In the end, the line impresses the point with its newfound appreciation for change, while the scribble is permanently stuck as a confused mess, leading to another excellent pun: “The spoils belong to the vector”. Jones ‘adaptation (although some say the short was actually directed by Jones’ longtime collaborator Maurice Noble) won the Oscar for Best Animated Short and – as The Phantom Tollbooth“It has become a milestone in the classrooms.”
Other works by Juster include 2005 The Hello, Goodbye window and its 2008 sequel, Sourpuss And Sweetie Pie, both of which (as he explained in the same AV Club interview) were inspired by his granddaughter. Furthermore, despite having written one of the most respected and loved children’s books of all time, Juster continued to work as an architect until he retired.
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