Apprecation(Draft)

Raymond Feng                          Appreciation Draft        10/7/11            

Intro: In the childhood book The Phantom Tollbooth, there are a lot of really good things that make it a real piece of writing. I believe that any age will enjoy reading this book because it teaches you life lessons and things that totally amazes you. This book brought back a lot of memories when I was little, the main character in this book has sort of the same personality as me when I was a young kid. This book has taught me a lot of lessons and about life. This book will take you to a place beyond the real world, in a world where anything is possible and full of adventures. This is why I love this book and appreciate everything about it.

P1:I really appreciate how Norton Juster made the plot, I could tell he planned it out very carefully. He chooses specific lands that Milo will have to pass through in order to start his real adventure by saving Rhyme and Reason. Everything about the plot is basically really good. He goes through a weird tollbooth in a electronic car, and everything about it is just strange and weird. It’s so mysterious that a big package just appears in front of your house, I wonder who sent it and how he knows Milo is having a difficult time about spending his time. The plot has a lot of details and multiple parts of the adventure/journey. Norton Juster really uses a lot of details to make his plot and his story.

P2: I really appreciate Norton Juster for spending so much time on different places so he could teach us about all the life lessons. I really loved the different places, when I first read it, it seemed really magical and really mysterious. Norton Juster must’ve spent days trying to create some weird strange place where people are really different. He also imports different lessons in each scene/ place which makes the book even more interesting. I loved the Doldrums and the Jump to Conclusions because the Doldrums was a really weird place where no one could think or laugh which also made me laugh. It also taught the value of time and how Milo shouldn’t just waste it. The Jump to Conclusions land was another really cool place with a weird now, people that make assumptions automatically gets transported to a land where people got there by making assumptions. These places are extremely important in the book and one of the best things I appreciate!

P3: I appreciate Milo’s characteristics because they are really similar to mine and Milo is just a really cool character. He is really innocent and is more like a five year old because he doesn’t really know anything in the Lands Beyond. His characteristics really describe who he is and who I was so I really appreciate that the author gave him these characteristics. He was calm, innocent, weird, and not aggressive, he was basically friendly. Before he went to the Lands Beyond, Milo was a boring, stupid, and grumpy boy that didn’t know what to do with his life. That’s basically how I was when I was a young kid because I was always stuck at home with nothing to do. This is why I appreciate the author for making him similar to the way I feel about the world and life when I was a young kid.

P4: I really appreciate how Norton Juster made the characters, this is one of the most important things I deeply appreciate in the book. Almost every character’s names in the book means something and describes their characteristics and what they are good at. For example, the Mathemagician was named because he loved to do math and everything he did was in numbers. It tells the reader that the Mathemagcian is a person that does math. This makes the book more interesting and exciting and that’s why I really appreciate this aspect of the book. People like Reason are more examples, she is a person that tries to talk sense into people and everything she does she would give reasons on whether things are bad or not.