Some questions kids asked Norton about The Phantom Tollbooth:

My favorite character was the green-eyed, curly-haired, big-foot, broad-shouldered, round-bodied, extremely enormous monster ... Have you met anyone like this lately? — Phoebe Abbruzzese, 7, Longview, Wash.

"I meet people like that every day. They're the people who explain things in the way they want you to understand them ... That demon wants them to get very relaxed and easy so that the demons can come and destroy them ...

"All those demons that go through the book and appear finally at the end in their most frightening form were the demons that were my demons as a child and are still around. I still know all of those people very well, and I'm just a little bit better at avoiding them or sidestepping them."