The Phantom Tollbooth

Milo is a bored boy who drives his toy car through a mysterious tollbooth into the Lands Beyond, where Dictionopolis and Digitopolis are at war over whether words or numbers are more important, and the princesses Rhyme and Reason have been banished from the Kingdom of Wisdom. The demons he faces include the Terrible Trivium, who keeps people busy with meaningless tasks, and the Senses Taker, who makes people forget why they were doing anything in the first place. Juster uses wordplay, puns, and absurdist logic to make an argument about curiosity, learning, and the joy of paying attention — that boredom is not a natural condition but a choice, that the world is full of things worth noticing if you decide to notice them. Has been in print continuously since 1961 because children keep finding that it names something true about their own minds and offers a way out.