Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

genre: fiction

If you have a fondness for words, a penchant for unique phraseology, you must read this book. Ella lives on the island of Nollop in a singularly unique community dedicated to the memory of the man who created that infamous sentence using each letter of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” When the island’s council begins banning the use of individual letters, Ella must work with her family and friends to not loose hope – and to find a solution before there are no letters left.

Crazy plot, no? It’s an epistolary novel, PERFECT format for such a story – satirical and political. As some fight against the injustice of the letter-banning, others clamber to the side of the council, revering Nollop and clinging to their belief that the banning of letters is his will. Of course it is silly, over-the-top and outrageous, and if you are afraid of big and unfamiliar words, this may not be the book for you. But for someone who loves words, to notice how each epistle has to be written with fewer and fewer letters of the alphabet? That’s cleverness, in my opinion. It’s also certainly a loopy sort of treatise on censorship and totalitarianism, but with a light tough and silly words like “Satto-Gatto” Please, when you read this, be sure to always read the dates at the top of the page. Hilarity.