Partway through their reading of Norton Juster’s classic novel The Phantom Tollbooth, the sixth graders paused to take inventory of the peculiar phrases they’d encountered so far. Idioms, they discovered, are ideal fodder for creative confusion because what we actually say when we use them is so often ridiculously different from what we all know they mean.

Our wonderfully wacky English language has many charming idioms, and not a few of them come to life in The Phantom Tollbooth. For example, before he learned to spell, the Spelling Bee, himself an enormous bee, took up part time work in people’s bonnets. And if you’re not careful along the shores of the Sea of Knowledge, you might make an unfounded assumption about something and find yourself jumping to the Island of Conclusions.

Everyone chose three idioms from the novel and illustrated to humorous effect the different literal and understood meanings of each. Take a look!