Norton Juster, the acclaimed children’s author who created a world of adventure and punditry in the million-selling classic Ghost Tollbooth and he remained faithful to his broad self-eye in such things The Dot and the Line and “Stark Naked,” died at 91.
Juster’s death was confirmed Tuesday by a spokesman for Random House Children’s Books, who did not provide immediate details. Juster’s friend and co-author Mo Willems admitted on Tuesday that Juster had a “run out of stories” and died “peacefully” the night before.
“Norton’s greatest work was himself: a tapestry of fascinating stories,” wrote Willems.
Ghost Tollbooth, published in 1961, follows the events of young Milo through the Kingdom of Wisdom, a land stretching from The Foothills of Confusion to The Valley of Sound, in which the sad princesses Rhyme and Reason and the fearsome Gorgons Hate and Malice.
Pictures were provided by his then lounge, Jules Feiffer, who would then collaborate with Juster on The Odious Ogre, published in 2010. Eric Carle from The very hungry caterpillar illustrated reputation Otter Nonsense at Juster, released in 1982.
As Juster wrote in the introduction to the 1999 reprint of Ghost Tollbooth, he first thought of the book when he was in his late 20s and working at an architectural firm in New York City. He wondered, as a child, at the connection people have with the world around them.
He had received a donation for a book on urban planning and spent months researching it before a boy’s “impressive” question – heard by Juster in a restaurant – changed his story and changed it. life: “What’s the maximum number?”
“I began to make up what I thought would be a child’s conflict with numbers, words and meaning and other strange concepts imposed on children,” he wrote. “I enjoyed being able to turn things upside down and enjoy all the bad stories and puns and wordplay that my father introduced me to when I was I grow up. ”
Another Juster commentator, Maurice Sendak, would praise “the joy and happiness of the book in glorious lunar gymnastics. ”In a 1970 film adaptation was Butch Patrick of Munster reputation, and The Ghost Tollbooth it was later made into music, with a score by Arnold Black and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.
Juster’s wife, 54, Jeanne, died in 2018. They had a daughter, Emily.
Juster, a native of New York City, was the son and brother of architects and never completely turned away from his family craft. He continued to write books, while co-founding the architectural firm Juster Pope Associates, in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and his stories often compounded similar gifts. in the face of structure and absenteeism.
“The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Mathematics” is a love triangle because only Juster could have thought – between a straight and straight line, a dotted dot and a squiggle swing. (Animated Chuck Jones transformed into an Oscar-winning short film).
“Stark Naked” finds an undressed protagonist traveling the city of Emotional Heights, meeting characters such as intellectual Noel Lott and school principal Martin Nett.
Juster’s latest stories included Window Hello, Goodbye, for which designer Chris Raschka received the Caldecott Medal, and the sequel Sourpuss and Sweetie Piece. One project he never got around to: that book on urban planning.
“The funny thing is that a lot of the things I was thinking about for that book got into ‘The Phantom Tollbooth,’ ‘he wrote in 1999.” Maybe someday I’ll get back it up when I try to avoid doing something else. ”