The Phantom Tollbooth

Oh what a lovely read, this was a 4 or 4.5 stars for me. I don't remember liking it a whole lot as a kid but that's probably because most of the jokes would've flown over my head. I was very much more able to appreciate all that humour and wit now as an adult than I could as a child. Usually children's books are so sweet to read because it makes the world so simple and easy to digest, but this one was kinda different in the way that it taught kids about how complex the world was and how to appreciate that complexity, but in bite-sized pieces.

I think there were some lands that went by so fast that they felt almost irrelevant, like the Island of Conclusions. I did enjoy the opportunity it gave for more puns but it really felt a bit pointless sometimes. My favorite land had to be Dictionopolis with all the puns coming in fast and furious, but I preferred the Mathemagician to King Azaz. C'mon, a pencil as a wizard staff? Amazing.

My fave name in the book was Faintly Macabre the not-so-wicked Which, which will now be my next in-game character name, followed by Kakofonous A. Dischord. What I liked most about it was that it had several of those quotes that feels a bit too poignant for children to understand but which would really hit adults in the feels, the most memorable one for me was: “I think I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall.”