Word: tollbooths
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...occasional grenade. The V.C. tax collector is everywhere levying piasters to pay for the war. Even in neutral or government-controlled areas, Allied pilots have learned that a line of trucks stopped on a road below usually means that the V.C. have set up an impromptu but effective tollbooth. With the piasters that their taxmen collect, well-dressed V.C. agents in Saigon buy medicines, cement, cloth and food for their troops...
...like Leacock, like any writer who can really appeal to children, Juster is out to explore, not disillusion. The boundary line he establishes between reality and fantasy is just an imaginary tollbooth, and unlike real tollbooths, this one reimburses itself into obsolescence; after one voyage, Milo's real world has become sufficiently full of exciting ideas...
Illustrated tactfully and drolly by Jules Feiffer (his suggestive lines don't deprive the imagination of its chance to embellish), The Phantom Tollbooth is a wonderful book to buy for children, parents, or pregnant friends. Remember not to have it gift-wrapped; you'll want to give it the once-over-lightly before passing...
Children and adults who are up to 256 pages will find sophisticated whimsy in The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (Epstein & Carroll; $3.95), which leads a vagrant young Ulysses on an unaccountable world detour to the Island of Conclusions. Jules Pfeiffer's illustrations fall between Thurber and Searle, but still enhance the best juvenile buy of the season...