M is for — Milo from Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth 
One of my favorite books when I was growing up was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. In it, I met Milo, a young boy who spends his days in perpetual boredom. He has no interest in anything at all and thinks everything, particularly learning, a waste of time. There is nothing he wants to do, nowhere he wants to go, and nothing worth seeing.
Then he comes home from school one day and finds a huge package in his room — a magical tollbooth complete with a car, directions, and a map. The tollbooth transports him to a wondrous world of strange places, stranger creatures, and eccentric people, who challenge him to think and feel and experience life in all its glory. He realizes that it’s the journey that’s important, not just the destination. He learns many things about himself and discovers that even he can be a hero, when he rescues the Princesses Rhyme and Reason from the Castle in the Air.
I love this book, not just because I get to travel vicariously to a fantastical world, but because reading about Milo reminds me to engage in life and take in everything around me, and to never, ever take anything for granted.
The Movie
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
© Lori L. MacLaughlin and Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams, 2015. All rights reserved.
Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams 
I probably read it when I was a kid, but I don’t remember.
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I originally got it through the Scholastic book club in school. It’s a great story.
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Such a great book! I remember checking this out from the library on multiple occasions.
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The pages are starting to fall out of mine from multiple readings. I had to buy a new one for my kids to read.
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Didn’t know about this book, or the movie. I aim to fix that. 🙂
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The book is a lot better than the movie, as is the usual case.
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I don’t think I’ve ever read this.
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It’s well worth the read!
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I’ve not read this one, but I want to now.
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I really enjoyed it, and I like the message it conveys.
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I haven’t read this one, but I’m adding it to the list. I like the idea that he starts out as perpetually bored with life. Not sure that I’ve seen that happen much. I rather liked Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a story because Eustace starts out as a jerk and then grows through the adventure. It seems like a lot of kid adventure stories start with relatively bland “everykid” protagonists.
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Yes, I agree, a lot of them do. I love the Phantom Tollbooth. It’s funny, and it makes you think about what’s really important in life.
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