January 4, 2010
So I finished the year with The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It was one of the books featured on a list of “The Nation’s Favourite Children’s Books” produced by Waterstones and, for some reason that I can’t for the life of me remember, caught my eye. It was written early in the Sixties and captures some of that decade’s zany experimentalism (although that came later on) while narrating a good, old-fashioned quest AND pondering the nature of learning and education. It’s a difficult book to describe in a nuthshell but given that its locations include the Doldrums. the isle of Conclusions (you jump to get there) and the Mountains Of Ignorance, you should get a bit of an idea. It could have been a patronising disaster but turns out to be something quite decent. A quirky way to finish by year of reading.

So I finished the year with The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

It was one of the books featured on a list of “The Nation’s Favourite Children’s Books” produced by Waterstones and, for some reason that I can’t for the life of me remember, caught my eye.

It was written early in the Sixties and captures some of that decade’s zany experimentalism (although that came later on) while narrating a good, old-fashioned quest AND pondering the nature of learning and education.

It’s a difficult book to describe in a nuthshell but given that its locations include the Doldrums. the isle of Conclusions (you jump to get there) and the Mountains Of Ignorance, you should get a bit of an idea.

It could have been a patronising disaster but turns out to be something quite decent. A quirky way to finish by year of reading.

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