The Phantom Tollbooth

The puns and language in this story keep you on your toes. At times it is funny and at others it is obnoxious. I do love the great advice and quotes about the vices and challenges represented by the demons of ignorance. There a gems about learning and knowledge acquisition that are excellent.

Full of literal idioms, devilish puns, and the most realistic demons known to mankind, I wish this book had found me in my fourth grade instead of my fourth decade.

To quote Julius Caesar (as played by Dom DeLuise), “Nice. Not thrilling, but nice.”It was cute. Lots of horrible puns, which you would think would be to my taste, but somehow having them come at you one after another, it just gets grating. (In my opinion, a pun or dad joke truly shines when one spontaneously seizes a happenstance opportunity during a normal conversation.)I pretty much agree with Patrick Rothfuss's review - nothing actively bad, but it was hard to care. Hard to feel energized about reading further.As an alternative, I highly recommend the picture book [b:The King Who Rained 616032 The King Who Rained Fred Gwynne https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1297893384s/616032.jpg 990347], which does a better job of avoiding over-saturation (heh - see? I did not plan that) with puns. (Plus, I only now realized that it was written by Fred Gwynn, of Herman Munster fame! How cool!)