Norton Juster
(b. 1929)

Norton Juster spent his professional life primarily as an architect, designing buildings and other structures. However, with the 1961 publication of his first novel, The Phantom Tollbooth, Juster suddenly found himself also a celebrated author of children's books. His love of mathematics, geometry, and aesthetics (the study of art and of people's reactions to it) is evident in his writings.

Juster was born on June 2, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel, was an architect who encouraged his son's interest in the world of design. Juster attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn. He enjoyed writing for his classes, but never imagined writing for a living. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1952. After college he won a Fulbright scholarship to study city planning at the University of Liverpool in England.

Upon completing his graduate studies, Juster put his architectural skills to work. From 1954 to 1957, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve as an engineer. During that time, he constructed airfields in Morocco and Newfoundland.

Juster demonstrated great aptitude and ambition as an architect. In 1960, he received a Ford Foundation grant for work in urban aesthetics. The same year, he joined the architectural firm of Juster & Gugliotta. In addition, he became a professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he worked for the next decade. As if being a full-time architect and professor weren't enough, Juster found himself doing creative writing in his spare time "as a relaxation" from a difficult planning project, he says. He began writing what he thought was only going to be a short story for his own pleasure. Yet before long, Juster says, "it had created its own life and I was hooked." The result was The Phantom Tollbooth, a fantasy about a boy named Milo who travels to the Lands Beyond, where Dictionopolis, the kingdom of words, is at war with Digitopolis, the kingdom of numbers. Critics hailed the book as a children's classic, comparing it in style and wordplay to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Young readers formed the Phantom Phan Club.

The huge success of his first novel did not encourage Juster to quit work as an architect and pursue writing full-time. However, he did continue to write on the side. In 1963 his second book, The Dot and the Line, was published. It is an allegory describing the romance between a round dot and a straight line that learn to accept their differences and work together to create beautiful and complex designs.

In 1965, Juster produced his third children's book, Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys. His trilogy of fantasies focuses on people searching for fulfillment in life.

Married in 1964, Juster and his wife, Jeanne, moved five years later to an old farm in western Massachusetts. He established a new architectural firm and became a professor of architectural design at Hampshire College in Amherst. A daughter, Emily, was born in 1971.

To the great disappointment of his Phantom Phans, the 1970s brought a temporary halt to Juster's fiction for children. Working on a farm proved a time-consuming task for Juster. He was amazed by the amount of labor required to maintain a farm. He began pondering how early American farmers, especially women, managed to run farms. His research resulted in a new book in 1979, this one nonfiction and for adults: So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America, 1865–1895. It is a collection of essays, poetry, and letters written by, for, and about farm women in the late nineteenth century.

The 1980s saw Juster write two new books for children. In 1982, he produced Otter Nonsense, a playful collection of puns based on animals' names, such as "lemming meringue pie," "crocoduel," and "pupsicle." In 1989, he published As: A Surfeit of Similes, the story of two men who travel the world to collect similes such as "fresh as a daisy" and "hot as a griddle."

Like many of his fictional characters, Juster has journeyed to a variety of places in life. As a city person who moved to the country, he has managed successfully to meld his two worlds. "My love of the country is influenced and heightened by my city experience," he says, "and, conversely, my appreciation of the city has grown through the time spent here [in the country]."

Juster's career has also straddled two worlds, though he remains modest about his writing. "My sense of myself is as an architect, and I am always a little embarrassed to call myself a writer, since I don't engage in it with the same consistency and commitment," he admits.

The Renaissance was a great cultural movement that began in Italy during the 1300s, spread to other countries in Europe in the 1400s, and lasted until about 1600. The Renaissance marked a great change in philosophy, art, and architecture from the styles used during the Middle Ages. The word renaissance means rebirth or renewal, and during this time many European scholars and artists worked to recapture the spirit of ancient Greece and Rome, which had emphasized learning, beauty, justice, and harmony in all things. Renaissance architects designed their buildings to help make people aware of human dignity and potential.

"Alberic the Wise" is set during the Renaissance. Alberic's attempts to find fulfillment through excellence in his craft reflect the Renaissance spirit. Milo's struggle in The Phantom Tollbooth to bring peace and harmony to the Kingdom of Wisdom, and by doing so improve himself, also reflects Renaissance ideals.

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