quite easily my favorite book ever

I literally just finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Declaring this book as my all-time favorite is a pretty strong statement, but it is just so fabulous.

This is the story of Milo, a bored young boy who discovers a tollbooth in his bedroom. He enters to find an imaginative world where Rhyme and Reason are lost. In his quest to find them, he runs into several interesting characters along the way. Filled with puns, this young adult book is filled with demons that we face everyday (like Terrible Trivium and the Gelatinous Giant).

During the parade at the end of the book, Rhyme tells Milo that he is the hero. Incredulous, Milo said that he could not have done the work without the help of everyone he met along the way. Reason replied: “That may be true, … but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

What a powerful statement that adults need to be reminded of probably more frequently than children.

Just today I was meeting with Allison Cohen of Sightline and we were discussing moving beyond our comfort zones to trying things that we don’t completely know how to do. I admitted that I have a hard time asking people for help and I am drawn to doing projects that I can do all on my own. It is quite overwhelming to realize that a project you begin in one format all of a sudden takes a different path. I guess that it is my goal to make sure I am persistent and at least try. That’s what Milo did and he was greatly rewarded; he discovered his imagination.