Norton Juster (born June 2, 1929) is an American architect and author. He is famous primarily for writing children's books; among them The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Books 3 Other media 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

His father was an architect, and Juster's brother became an architect as well. He served in the United States Navy before settling into his architectural career.

Juster wrote The Phantom Tollbooth in the early 1960s while living in Brooklyn, New York. Jules Feiffer, a neighbor of Juster's, did the illustrations.

Although Juster enjoyed writing, his architectural career remained his primary focus. He was also a teacher.

Juster served as a professor of architecture and environmental design at Hampshire College from its first semester in 1970 until his retirement in 1992.

Juster co-founded a small architectural firm, Juster Pope Associates, in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, in 1970. The firm was renamed Juster Pope Frazier after Jack Frazier joined the firm in 1978.

Juster currently lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his wife, Jeanne. Although he has retired from architecture, he still writes. His book The Hello, Goodbye Window, published May 15, 2005, won the Caldecott Medal for Chris Raschka's illustration in 2006. The sequel, Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie, came out in 2008.

[edit] Books

• The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) (ISBN 0-394-81500-9)
• The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1963) (ISBN 1-58717-066-3)
• Alberic the Wise and Other Stories (1965) (ISBN 0-88708-243-2)
• Stark Naked: A Paranomastic Odyssey (1969) (Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 71-85568)— illustrated by Arnold Roth
• So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895 (editor) (1979) (ISBN 0-670-65483-3) — non-fiction
• Otter Nonsense (1982) (ISBN 0-399-20932-8) — illustrated by Eric Carle
• As: A Surfeit of Similes (1989) (ISBN 0-688-08139-8)
• A Woman's Place: Yesterday's Women in Rural America (1996) (ISBN 1-55591-250-8) — non-fiction
• The Hello, Goodbye Window (2005) (ISBN 0-7868-0914-0) — illustrated by Chris Raschka
• Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie (2008) (ISBN 9780439929431) - illustrated by Chris Raschka

[edit] Other media

Both The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line were adapted into films by animator Chuck Jones.

The Phantom Tollbooth was also adapted into a musical by Norton Juster and Sheldon Harnick, with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and music composed by Arnold Black.^[1]

There have been musical settings of a "A Colorful Symphony" from The Phantom Tollbooth for narrator and orchestra and of The Dot and the Line for narrator and chamber ensemble by composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• MTI Author Biography
• Powells.com interview
• Salon.com interview
• Underdown.org interview