Kelly Monster

When I was in elementary school I was extremely bored. So bored that I would give each of my crayons a distinct voice and name, and every day I would act out little crayon soap operas on top of my desk. This almost cured my boredom.

An even better cure for childhood boredom is returning home from a dull day at school to find a tollbooth sitting in your bedroom. This is what happens to Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth. Milo is a very bored little boy, only he is not just bored in school, but everywhere.

He drives his electric toy car through the tollbooth, and finds a different world. He finds himself on a mission to save the princesses named Rhyme and Reason of the strange land he has found (I know what you’re thinking, they probably got teased a lot when they were younger with those names). Rhyme and Reason were banished by the two rulers of the land, which is split in half. One ruler named King Azaz rules Dictionopolis, a land that only values words. The other ruler, the Mathemagician, rules Digitopolis and he only cares about numbers. Of course they hate each other, because they are brothers and because they like different things. They fight and fight over which is better, letters or numbers, and finally they force Rhyme and Reason to decide. Rhyme and Reason rule that they are equally important. Well the two rulers don’t like this answer at all,  so they banish the two princesses to the castle in the air. The only problem is, now they are left with a land without rhyme or reason. Sucks, I know. So they ask Milo to get the two princesses back. Of course the castle in the air is hard to get to. The name says it all. It’s also guarded by a bunch of jerks, but still Milo takes on this quest.

The Phantom Tollbooth is a book by Norton Juster but it is also a movie directed by Chuck Jones, who directed a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons. In the movie, it is live action at the beginning, but once Milo drives through the tollbooth the movie is a completely animated cartoon world.  The live-action Milo is none other than Butch Patrick. He then voices the cartoon version of Milo inside the world of the tollbooth. Butch Patrick played Eddie Munster on the TV show The Munsters, and it was a little strange to see him without his monster-boy make-up on. Butch Patrick played Milo a little pissy, he looked really upset all the time before he went into the world of the tollbooth, maybe that was his interpretation of being bored- I dunno, but he looked ticked-off.

Speaking of ticked. One of my favorite characters in the movie, and in the book, was Tock the dog. Tock is very concerned about time, and how valuable it is. He doesn’t mean to be gruff, but that’s what people expect from a watchdog. Oh yeah, if you can’t handle a few bad puns, you should probably steer clear of this story. Oh common, get over it, you’ll live, there’s only a few. It’s worth it I promise.

I liked the movie and the book, there were differences, but I’m okay with that. Movies are not books, books are not movies. We can enjoy both.

Something I loved in the book that wasn’t in the movie was how they eat at Digitopolis. When people ate food they became more hungry, so people would eat to become less full then they currently were, because they were getting fuller all the time. Confused? Think about why we eat, because were hungry and want to become more full. Reverse that concept and you’ve got a meal at Digitopolis. Just think, in their world the concern for child skinniness could be the same as the concern for child obesity in America today.

This story has a warm and fuzzy message to it. By the end of Milo’s journey, Milo finds out that there are adventures to be had everywhere, not just through a magical tollbooth. Although, the tollbooth did kinda help.

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