There’s not a lot that surprises me in the letters, what sometimes they’re perfectly ordinary letters that tell you what they like in the book or don’t understand. Every once in a while there’s a letter that touches you. I remember not so long afterThe Phantom Tollbooth came out, I got a letter from a young Hispanic girl who was writing and very troubled by why all the princesses were blonde and blue eyed. And I stopped and said, “oh my goodness.” I fallen into the trap that was made for me when I was a kid. All princesses were blonde and had blue eyes. And so I just continued it. And every once in a while you get something like that, a comment or a question that forces you to stop and say to yourself, “okay, where am I in this world right now?” And sometimes the surprises are ones of reconnecting with a child’s perception of things.
This is not a letter. I was at a school not so long ago when a little boy got up and said, “Mr. Juster, what was the technology like in your time?” And I knew what he meant suddenly because my time was back in the Middle Ages and I stopped for a minute and I said, “well, we had fire.” And I looked up and all the teachers were on the floor laughing, and none of the kids had any idea I was putting them on. And I remember, suddenly remembered all the things about my father that I used to ask him, which were very similar. And those things are wonderful because they really stop you and make you think about yourself and the world and what’s happening. A letter I got not so long ago wrote, a little girl wrote, “Mr. Juster, I’m writing you because I’ve heard you are still alive.” Which is comforting of course, but of course, again, kids don’t have that. It’s a very different sense of time. It’s why, and place even. It’s why a book like The Phantom Tollbooth works because they’re perfectly willing to accept.