Welcome to "Our Favorite Things"

Hi!  Thanks for checking out the new Youth Services blog, "Our Favorite Things."  We wanted to share with you some of our top picks from the collection - books, music, movies, and more!  Sometimes we might share new releases, sometimes classics.  And sometimes hidden gems that you might not have heard of.  Let us know what you think!

To start things off, I thought I'd tell you about one of my most favorite books of all time: The Phantom Toolbooth, by Norton Juster. Written way back in 1961, it is indeed a classic.

At the center of the story is a boy named Milo.  And he's a very restless kid.  Wherever he is, he'd rather be somewhere else; whatever he's doing, he'd rather be doing something else.  He finds the world to be very dull and boring.

Then one day a mysterious package shows up in Milo's bedroom. It turns out to be a pretend tollbooth, but when Milo gets it set up and drives his toy car through it, he discovers it's not so pretend after all.

Milo suddenly finds himself in a strange land populated by even stranger characters.  The first friend he makes is Tock, a watchdog who ticks.  Along with the Humbug, the threesome sets out to rescue Rhyme and Reason from the Mountains of Ignorance.  Along the way, Milo has to settle the war between King Azaz the Unabridged (who rules the kingdom of words) and the Mathemagician (who rules the kingdom of numbers).  And that's just for starters!

There's a lot to love in The Phantom Tollbooth.  It's got a great sense of absurdity and silliness, and absolutely brilliant word play (one of my favorite parts is when they get in a car and are told to be silent - "for it goes without saying").  Then there are Jules Feiffer's classic illustrations, which also add to the great humor of the book.  And at the end of the day, Milo reminds us that there's interesting stuff all around us - if only we think to look for it.  And that's what's made it one of my all-time favorites.

Have you read The Phantom Tollbooth?  What did you think of it?