Ella Minnow Pea

 OK I realize this is another middle school or maybe young adult book, but this is a great story.  I love this book!  I read it when it first was published and enjoyed it just for its writing style and the uniqueness of the plot.  But now when I reread it for my book group, I was amazed at how timely and relevant it still is.

This is the story of a small,  fictional island of Nollop, off the state of South Carolina.  Ella Minnow Pea lives on the island, her name is a play on the in the alphabet, “L M N O P “ .  The island is named after Nevin Nollop who wrote the famous pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

On this island because they worship Nollop, when a letter under the statue of Nollop drops and breaks they town leaders decide it is Nollop speaking to them from the beyond.  They pass a law that each letter that drops from the statue must not be spoken or written anymore.  As the story continues author Mark Dunn drops letters from the story script.  The book written all in correspondence between Ella and others gets more and more interesting to read as letters cannot be used at the risk of public embarrassment in the stocks or banishment from the island.

So much fun to read!

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet