{"id":198414,"date":"2021-03-09T23:50:08","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T20:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/norton-juster-the-phantom-tollbooth-author-dead-at-91\/"},"modified":"2021-03-09T23:50:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T20:50:08","slug":"norton-juster-the-phantom-tollbooth-author-dead-at-91","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/norton-juster-the-phantom-tollbooth-author-dead-at-91\/","title":{"rendered":"#Norton Juster, \u2018The Phantom Tollbooth\u2019 author, dead at 91"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Norton Juster, \u2018The Phantom Tollbooth\u2019 author, dead at 91<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Norton Juster, the celebrated children\u2019s author who fashioned a world of adventure and punning punditry in the million-selling classic \u201cThe Phantom Tollbooth<\/a>\u201d and remained true to his wide-eyed self in such favorites as \u201cThe Dot and the Line\u201d and \u201cStark Naked,\u201d has died at 91.<\/p>\n

Juster\u2019s death was confirmed Tuesday by a spokesperson for Random House Children\u2019s Books, who did not immedia<\/a>tely provide details. Juster\u2019s friend and fellow author Mo Willems tweeted Tuesday<\/a> that Juster \u201cran out of stories\u201d and died \u201cpeacefully\u201d the night before.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorton\u2019s greatest work was himself: a tapestry of delightful tales,\u201d Willems wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Phantom Tollbooth,\u201d published in 1961, followed the adventures of young Milo through the Kingdom of Wisdom, a land extending from The Foothills of Confusion to The Valley of Sound, populated by the imperiled princesses Rhyme and Reason and the fearsome Gorgons of Hate and Malice.<\/p>\n

Drawings were provided by his roommate at the time, Jules Feiffer, who would later collaborate with Juster on \u201cThe Odious Ogre,\u201d published in 2010. Eric Carle of \u201cThe Very Hungry Caterpillar\u201d fame illustrated Juster\u2019s \u201cOtter Nonsense,\u201d which came out in 1982.<\/p>\n

As Juster wrote in the introduction to a 1999 reissue of \u201cThe Phantom Tollbooth,\u201d he first thought of the book when he was in his late 20s and working at an architectural firm in New York City. He found himself wondering, the way a child might, about how people relate to the world around them.<\/p>\n

He had received a grant for a book on urban planning and spent months researching it before a boy\u2019s \u201cstartling\u201d question \u2014 overheard by Juster in a restaurant \u2014 changed his narrative and changed his life: \u201cWhat\u2019s the biggest number there is?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to compose what I thought would be about a child\u2019s confrontation with numbers and words and meanings and other strange concepts that are imposed on children,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI loved the opportunity to turns things upside down and inside out and indulge in all the bad jokes and puns and wordplay that my father had introduced me to when I was growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Norton
Norton Juster\u2019s \u201cThe Phantom Tollbooth\u201d was turned into a 1970 movie starring Butch Patrick.<\/figcaption>
Everett Collection <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another Juster admirer, Maurice Sendak, would praise the book\u2019s \u201cexcitement and sheer delight in glorious lunatic linguistic acrobatics.\u201d A 1970 film adaptation starred Butch Patrick of \u201cThe Munsters\u201d fame, and \u201cThe Phantom Tollbooth\u201d was later made into a musical, with a score by Arnold Black and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.<\/p>\n

Juster\u2019s wife of 54 years, Jeanne, died in 2018. They had a daughter, Emily.<\/p>\n

Juster, a native of New York City, was the son and brother of architects and he never turned entirely from his family craft. He continued to write books, while co-founding the architectural firm Juster Pope Associates, in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and his stories often combined his seemingly opposite gifts for structure and absurdity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dot and the Line: A Romance in Mathematics\u201d is a love triangle as only Juster could have imagined \u2014 between a straight and straight-laced line, a dotty dot and a swinging squiggle. (Animator Chuck Jones adapted it into an Oscar-winning short film.)<\/p>\n

\u201cStark Naked\u201d finds an undressed protagonist wandering in the town of Emotional Heights, encountering such characters as the intellectual Noel Lott and school principal Martin Nett.<\/p>\n

Juster\u2019s more recent stories included \u201cThe Hello, Goodbye Window,\u201d for which illustrator Chris Raschka received a Caldecott Medal, and the sequel \u201cSourpuss and Sweetie Pie.\u201d One project he never got around to: that book on urban planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funny thing is that many of the things I was thinking about for that book did find their way into \u2018The Phantom Tollbooth,\u2019\u201d he wrote in 1999. \u201cMaybe someday I\u2019ll get back to it when I\u2019m trying to avoid doing something else.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n