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If you haven’t read The Phantom Tollbooth, YOUR LIFE IS IN IMMEDIATE DANGER. Go pry a copy out of a child’s hands and read it RIGHT NOW, for the love of God. All humans beings must.
This book makes me happy to be a living, thinking being on this planet. Which is a lot, coming from me. And which is also why I swooned when I saw Jules Feiffer speak at the recent conference of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators. I swooned over a lot at this conference, come to think of it.
Feiffer drew the original, magnificent illustrations for the book, which was brilliantly written by Norton Juster and first published in 1961. Here’s the story Feiffer told about how he came to illustrate the book. I am paraphrasing here, except for the very last line, which is a direct quote written verbatim in the margins of my conference program.
In the late 1950’s Norton Juster and I were roommates and great friends, both returned from service in Korea. Norton was an architect, and got a $5,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to write a book on urban planning. Not having any ideas about urban planning, Norton decided to write a children’s book instead.
We lived in a duplex apartment. He would write upstairs for a while and then come down to read me his new passage, laughing uproariously at his own work. I was the political cartoonist at the Village Voice at the time, and my goal was to overthrow the United States government. I had no interest in children’s books or illustrating for children, but as Norton read the passages to me, I just started drawing little sketches of the characters here and there.
Then Norton asked if I would officially illustrate the book. Now, you have to understand that Norton was a great cook, and he cooked for me and our other roommate every night. I wanted to do the pictures for the book as an act of friendship, "but I also had to draw the goddamn book or else I wouldn’t EAT."
So that’s how it happened. The angry, brilliant, revolutionary political cartoonist got maneuvered into doing the Phantom Tollbooth pictures through food.
I did not know it was possible to have a crush on an 82-year-old.
