Norton Juster

Norton Juster (born June 2, 1929) is an American architect and author. He is best known as an author of children's books, including The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line.

Biography

Juster was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father was an architect, and Juster's brother became an architect as well. Juster served with the United States Navy before also becoming an architect; he studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.^[1]

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

Although Juster enjoyed writing, his architectural career remained his primary emphasis. He served as a professor of architecture and environmental design at Hampshire College from its first trimester 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, was published in 2008.

Books

• The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) (ISBN 0-394-81500-9) illustrated by Jules Feiffer
• The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1963) (ISBN 1-58717-066-3)
• Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys (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
• The Odious Ogre (2010) (ISBN 0-545-16202-5) - Illustrated by Jules Feiffer

Other media

Both The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line were adapted into films by animator Chuck Jones. The latter film received the 1965 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

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.^[2]

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.

References

1. ^ "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}". http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/norton-juster. 
2. ^ The Phantom Tollbooth Nov 16th - Dec 16th, 2007, Kennedy Center. (Retrieved Nov. 28th, 2007)

External links

• MTI Author Biography
• Powells.com interview
• Salon.com interview
• Underdown.org interview
• Adam Gopnik profile, The New Yorker, 10/17/2011

Persondata
Name	Juster, Norton
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Date of birth	June 2, 1929
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