Happy (early) 90th, Norton Juster! ("The Phantom Tollbooth")

[leno...@yahoo.com]

He turns 90 on June 2nd.

He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=14918&view=full_sptlght
"Norton Juster is an architect and planner, professor emeritus of
design at Hampshire College, and the author of a number of highly
acclaimed children's books, including The Dot and the Line, which was
made into an Academy Award-winning animated film. He has collaborated
with Sheldon Harnick (from 'Fiddler on the Roof') on the libretto for
an opera based on The Phantom Tollbooth."

(BTW, he called the movie of P.T. "drivel." I don't blame him.)

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/juster-norton-1929
(booklist & bio)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgqUya0kGPA
(10-minute video of "The Dot & the Line")

http://www.underdown.org/juster.htm
(long, fascinating interview from 2001)

From another 2001 interview, in Salon:

Q: One of the things that seems to really strike a chord with people
in "The Phantom Tollbooth" is Milo's state of mind at the book's
beginning: "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." I suspect that the first thing people today would say about
Milo is that he's depressed.

A: That was a problem I had back then, too. Milo's not a dysfunctional
kid. He's very typical. I kept having to rewrite those sections
because I didn't want him to come across as someone who had these deep
psychological problems. He just couldn't figure out why he was being
oppressed by all these things. When you think about it, kids get an
extraordinary number of facts thrown at them, and nothing connects
with anything else. As you get older, all these threads begin to
appear, and you realize that almost everything you come across
connects to six other things that you know about.

Kids don't know this. You give them a date, or a historical figure, or
some fact in math or science and that's it. They're just disembodied
things that don't mean anything. Milo doesn't know where he fits in
any of this and why he has to learn all of it.

(snip)

What's interesting about that exchange is that while most American
reviewers simply wrote that Milo was "bored," at least one British
critic, instead, called him "spoiled."

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1284&bih=794&ei=ikjxXNfuJMbr_Qa-naegAQ&q=norton+juster+kirkus&oq=norton+juster+kirkus&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160.2591.3659..3840...0.0..0.108.575.6j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0j0i67j0i22i30.IffI7Gt3ce4
(Kirkus reviews)

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/214.Norton_Juster
(reader reviews)

https://www.powells.com/post/interviews/norton-juster-beyond-expectations
(2006 interview)

https://www.google.com/search?ei=IkjxXObkJOjs_QaUxqq4CA&q=norton+juster++interview&oq=norton+juster++interview&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l2.4480.4480..4951...0.0..0.72.72.1......0....1..gws-wiz.albcWAiz3-s
(more interviews)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Juster

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/norton_juster.html
Excerpts:
"A good book written for children can be read by adults."

"But I find the best things I do, I do when I'm trying to avoid doing
something else I'm supposed to be doing. You know, you're working on
something. You get bugged, or you lose your enthusiasm or something.
So you turn to something else with an absolute vengeance."

"I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids
about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept
putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The
Phantom Tollbooth."

https://www.google.com/search?q=norton+juster&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjdxP3xisbiAhURSN8KHVhoC3oQ_AUIFCgB&biw=1284&bih=794
(videos)


Lenona.