Today's review is for:
Ella Minnow Pea
Author: Mark Dunn
Pages: 208
This story is about a young girl named Ella Minnow Pea. She lives on an island called Nollop - off the coast of the United States. According to the people there, the founder - Nevin Nollop - came up with the saying: "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" - a sentence we all know from our childhood that contains every letter of the alphabet. The saying is on individual letter tiles in town - in front of a statue of Nollop. One day the letter z tile falls off the sign and breaks. A little girl picks up the pieces and takes it to the town council. The council sees this as a sign from Nollop that the towns people can no longer use the letter z in any letters, books, talking, etc. The towns people - on the whole -think this is crazy, but decide to go along with the council. If they don't they first get a warning. 2nd they get a lashing or put in the wood stocks in town, and 3rd - banished from the island. Soon more and more tiles are falling off the sign and each time, those letters are banished from use by the towns people. A lot of people start leaving the island - some voluntarily - some not due to accidental use of those letters. One girl - Ella - and a man from American - Nate - talk to the council and try to tell them that it is just old glue, not Nollop himself, that is making the tiles fall off. The don't believe it, but do agree that if Nate and Ella can come up with a NEW sentence with 32 letters in it (all alphabet letters) then they will reverse the restricted use of letters on the island.
Will the sentence get made before all the tiles fall off and no letters are left to be used?
This book was short and really cute. It became funnier and funnier to see the towns people try to figure out how to write letters to each other without the use of certain letters. The even took to renaming the days of the week and months of the year.
It could be viewed as a symbol of what it would be like if a small few controlled the many. Hmmmmm.....sound familiar?
Take a look at this book. IT is well worth a read!
Stars: 4 1/2
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