Many of my childhood books had a lasting impact on me. There was a series called "My Father's Dragon." There was a brief book called "The Cricket of Times Square." There were the usual bits of a good story to engage the imagination, but simple little lessons that set anchorage in my young mind, and still occupy parts of the personal neural net. "The Phantom Tollbooth" definitely did that. And the author: Norton Juster.

This is one of those times when I heard the name, recognized it and said as the first words of the obit came through the radio speaker "Oh? I didn't he was still alive!"

Long ago I was introduced to "The Phantom Tollbooth". It stayed with me long enough that I believed in buying a copy for any girl I was sincerely interested in.

The Wikipedia entry had elements that made me laugh:

Juster enlisted in the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Navy in 1954, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. During one tour, to combat boredom, he began to write and illustrate a story for children, but the commanding officer later reprimanded him for it. Still, Juster also finished an unpublished satirical fairy tale called "The Passing of Irving". Later posted in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, again to combat boredom, he made up a non-existent military publication called the Naval News Service as a scheme to request interviews with attractive women. It worked so amazingly well that a neighbor asked to come along as his assistant. His next scheme was to make the "Garibaldi Society" (inspired by a statue in Washington Square Park), whose raison d'être was to reject anyone who applied for membership, designing an impressive logo, application, and rejection letter. It was at this time he met Jules Feiffer while taking out the trash.

This is my idea of a man in full!