The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth took us on an extraordinary adventure!

Here are a couple of quotes from Wikipedia:
"...It tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do, decides to drive through it in his toy car. The tollbooth transports him to a land called the Kingdom of Wisdom. There he acquires two faithful companions, has many adventures, and goes on a quest to rescue the princesses of the kingdom--Princess Rhyme and Princess Reason--from the castle of air. The text is full of puns, and many events, such as Milo's jump to the Island of Conclusions, exemplify literal meanings of English language idioms."

"Critics have acknowledged that the book is advanced for most children, who would not understand all the wordplay or the framing metaphor of the achievement of wisdom."

I can definitely recommend this book! Some homeschoolers have warned against this book because of it's magic and because one of the characters is a witch. The "magic" to me is more like a child's wild imagination, and the "witch" is not actually a witch at all. She is simply a woman in charge of "which" words to choose from, so she is called "Which." We listened to it on audio as we flipped the pages, so we had all the whimsical illustrations from the print book plus all the sound effects of an audio book engaging us!