Barnes & Noble East Lansing Essay Contest Winners

Third Place Award
Michael Hausinger
MacDonald Middle School student

“The Second Rescue of Rhyme and Reason”

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. – Lord Byron

If I could save one book from the firemen of Fahrenheit 451, I would memorize The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. This book would give people in Fahrenheit 451 an introduction to the wonders of the written language. It is funny, full of puns, imaginative, and gives people hope, all qualities that might generate interest in reading or listening to books.

The Phantom Tollbooth is about a boy named Milo who is always bored. One day, when he arrives home from school, he finds a box in his room containing a tollbooth, a map, road signs, and a book of laws. Milo drives through the tollbooth in a toy car into a world called the Kingdom of Wisdom. He has many adventures including jumping to (the island of) Conclusions and trying to rescue two princesses, Rhyme and Reason, from the Castle in the Air.

There are many reasons to save this book, one being that it is full of puns. The first person Milo meets is the Whether Man, who does not know the forecast because, “It is much more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be.” Milo soon meets Tock, a watchdog, who is a dog with a clock in his side. When he reaches Dictionopolis, the city of words, Milo cannot enter without a “reason.” A “reason” is a medallion on a chain with the wearer’s reason for entering engraved on it. Milo’s reads, “Why not?” Later on, Milo meets Kakofonous A. Dischord and his assistant, the awful Dynne, who love loud noises. Milo also meets the senses taker, who tries to take away his senses before reaching the Castle in the Air. The puns are funny because they use unexpected meanings of words, illustrating how wonderful language is.

The Phantom Tollbooth also has an important theme. Many things are possible if you don’t know they’re impossible. In this book, Azaz, King of Dictionopolis and the Mathemagician, King of the city of numbers, Digitopolis, thought the rescue of Rhyme and Reason was impossible. Milo did not know this, however, and succeeded in bringing them out of the Mountains of Ignorance. In Fahrenheit 451, many people did not attempt things that they worried were difficult, even if they were important. For example, people with books did not try to make them public because they feared the firemen. With this attitude, little was accomplished because no one tried.

Reading this book would make readers stretch their imaginations. With descriptions of people standing three feet off the ground to words growing on trees, this book would make people think and draw pictures in their minds of many strange things. In a time when people had not learned to use their imaginations by reading, picturing people and places in this book would be the first step to real thinking. People might notice how limiting their world was and work to make it better.

In Fahrenheit 451, people would have been bored often because of the small amount of choices they had. They had few discussions besides those about TV, and there was little independent thinking done. Reading books would help the people learn to think and challenge things in their daily lives. Many things can be learned from The Phantom Tollbooth, making it good for discussion. People would talk to others and start to ponder things in their lives, eventually giving Fahrenheit 451’s people some control and taking some away from the government. Providing The Phantom Tollbooth to the deprived people of Fahrenheit 451 would help restore rhyme and reason to their society.

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