This section is to discuss the placement of The Phantom Tollbooth in the canon of children's literature. Should this book belong in the canon of significance, i.e., the academic canon, or the canon of sentiment, i.e., the canon that acts to preserve childhood nostalgia? I think this book fits better into the canon of significance because of its usability in the classroom; for it can be used to teach literary devices among other things. Contrarily, it could also be classified as belonging to the canon of sentiment because this book is often passed from generation to generation, greatly loved by its readers, remembered with fondness, and passed from parent to child. Deborah Stevenson, in her article "Sentiment and Significance: The Impossibility of Recovery in the Children's Literature Canon or, The Drowning of The Water Babies" (1997), writes, "Whereas the academic canon of significance exists to justify, document, chronicle, or explain, the canon of sentiment exists to preserve - to preserve the childhood of those adults who create that canon and to preserve the affection those adults feel for the books within it" (p. 2).

 

It is interesting to note the way in which this book was received as a children's book when it was first published. In an interview with Kathleen Horning (2011), Norton Juster says, "Even before the book was released, they were all telling me in the publishing house that it was not a children's book at all, that the vocabulary was much too difficult and demanding, that the ideas were way beyond children, that they would never understand the wordplay and the punning. And to top it all off, of course, this was 1961; critics said that fantasy was bad for children because it disoriented them" (p. 40). Juster goes on to say, "You had to be very careful about what you put in a children's book, [because they believed] no child should ever run into anything that he didn't already know about in a book. It was a terrible time for children's books because that's exactly the wrong way to go about it" (p. 40). In an interview with RoseEtta Stone (2001), Juster qualifies, "Some kids are very attuned to word play and puns and things like that, so they get a lot of it early on. Other kids don't, and they just go with the story. And that's fine too. There is no one way you should ever be able to read anything" (para. 8). He also says, "I've had several readers who've written […] when they're out of high school and maybe in college. And again, it's a different book. They understand things differently, and they begin to pick up on other things in the book" (Horning, 2011, p. 41).

 

It is true that The Phantom Tollbooth has a great deal of vocabulary that is likely to not be completely understood by all children. But the intelligence this book purveys can be used to teach literary and poetic devices and to show children prime examples of homonyms, synonyms, idioms, clichés, etc. Juster says, "One of the knocks on the book was that there's a lot of the stuff in there that kids would not understand. I remember as a kid reading, and there were a lot of things in the books I read that I didn't understand, but it didn't matter because the story was good. You just ride by them. Maybe you come back later, in a year or two. You read it again, and suddenly you understand these things" (Horning, 2011, p. 41).

 

The Canon of Sentiment:

 

Stevenson (1997) writes, "Unlike the canon of significance, it makes no attempt at breadth, considers no issues of representation (in fact, is wildly non-representative in many ways), and suffers from few exigencies of time and space. It ultimately defines children's literature in the popular understanding of the term." (p. 2). "The sentimental canon, then, is formed largely on custom: it favors books that comfort over books that challenge, books that reinforce the status quo over books that attempt to change it: it renders all books safe by their very inclusion therein" (p. 3).

 

Juster says, "I talk to a lot of parents because they're often parents who have read it as kids. On a number of signings that I've done I'll get people who'll come up with an absolutely tattered copy which they say they've had for the last thirty years, or so. I think a lot of kids read it and it becomes part of their lives. And they will pass it on to their kids, and that whole sequence is also very satisfying" (Stone, 2001, para. 32).

 

Despite what Juster says in the above paragraph, I feel that this book is not likely to be classified under the canon of sentiment because Stevenson (1997) describes this canon as favoring "books that comfort over books that challenge, books that reinforce the status quo over books that attempt to change it" (p. 3). This book clearly challenges, and surely does not reinforce the status quo. This book can be sentimental, because of what Juster says, but it doesn't fit in the canon of sentiment.

 

The Canon of Significance:

 

This book belongs in the canon of significance because of its usability in the classroom. It mixes pleasure and diversion with edification, and forces the reader to think outside of their comfort zone, employs several literary devices, and offers the reader a new set of lenses to view the world.

 

Elizabeth Bird's "Top 100 Chapter Books" for School Library Journal (2012) lists The Phantom Tollbooth at number 21 and The National Education Association (2007) lists it at #36 from their online survey, "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children." Clearly, this book is of interest to educators. Stevenson (1997)  states that "A text's usefulness to children is relevant; more important as its connection to childhood. There are both old and new children's books that are more significant to adult reader than children" (p. 5). When I began reading The Phantom Tollbooth, I asked the people around me if they had read this book. Many said they picked it up as adults, but the majority were introduced as children by their parents. This book is both useful to children and significant to adults.

 

Virginia L. Wolf (1993), in discussing a group of books that includes The Phantom Tollbooth, writes that "fantasy functions as a rite of passage; it teaches children how to interpret the world, rejects didacticism and fascism as the drive for excessive order, and strives for a balance of order and chaos, reason and imagination, stability and risk, and other dualisms" (p. 218). Dualism is at the heart of this passage, and there is much to be learned by looking at dualism. If one understands that things have an antagonistic counterpart, one can learn to identify it, and then begin to search for ways to create resolutions or synthesis between the two. This is the heart of dialectic reasoning, and through this method of inquiry, higher knowledge can be sought out.

 

Mary McDonnell Harris, et al., (1979) describes The Phantom Tollbooth as "a fantasy travelogue through a land where letters and numbers, sights and sounds, flourish in all their wild variety, where clichés come to life,and where nonsense makes sense. A children's classic compared most frequently with Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth has been praised for the lessons it teaches" (p. 171). This description causes me to believe that Harris would view The Phantom Tollbooth exhibiting qualities of being in the canon of significance because she talks about how it teaches lessons and then gives examples of how it can be used in the classroom. Because of this book's ability to be an education tool, it fits more into the canon of significance over the canon of sentiment.