As reported by Deadline, author Norton Juster – best known for writing iconic and beloved children’s books Phantom Tollbooth and Point and line-he died. Juster’s death was confirmed by his publisher, Penguin and Random House an NPR report says he died of complications from 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 both architects) studying city planning and architecture in college. He joined the Navy Civil Engineers Corps in the 1950s, where he began writing and illustrating stories to pass the time. After leaving the army, Juster worked as an architect and managed to combine his two interests when he received a grant to write “a book about children’s cities” (as NPR puts it in this piece). Unfortunately, after reaching “to the waist in stacks of 3-by-5 notes, exhausted and discouraged,” Juster realized that he did not want to write a children’s book about cities and decided to write something that would appeal to the kind of “quiet, introverted, and lively” child he had been.
From there, Juster began writing a book about a permanently bored and disinterested boy named Milo, who returns home from school one day and finds a mysterious package containing a map of a place called “Beyond Countries.” and a small tribute. From there, he embarks on an adventure full of puns with a literal watchdog that is both delightful and educational – not just in the sense that he teaches children lots of new words and ideas. , but that it actually makes them learn about these things fun. That book, Phantom Tollbooth, is now considered an absolute classic of children’s literature, having sold millions of copies and been translated into several other languages. He was also adapted into an animated film by Chuck Jones, although Juster himself was not a fan of it (in 2011, he said AV Club that Jones treated the book “like the Holy Grail” and refused to change anything in the text even if he had made a better film).
Phantom Tollbooth it was actually Jones’ second adaptation of a Juster book, the other being Point and line: a romantic story in lower mathematics. The book, published in 1963, is about a straight line that falls in love with a dot, only to find that the dot is in love with a squeak. Seeking to improve, the line learns how to bend, changing its shape in new and complex ways. Finally, the line impresses the point with its new appreciation for change, while the knock is permanently blocked like a mixed mess, leading to another excellent pun: “The vector belongs to its prey”. Jones’ adaptation (although some say the short was actually directed by longtime collaborator Maurice Noble) went on to win an Oscar for best animated short and – as Phantom Tollbooth– has become a staple of classrooms.
Other works by Juster include 2005 Hello, Goodbye window and its continuation since 2008, Sourpuss And Sweetie Pie, both (as he explained in the same Club AV interview) were inspired by his niece. Also, despite writing one of the most acclaimed and generally loved children’s books of all time, Juster continued to work as an architect until his retirement.
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