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If you're interested in word games or being creative with language, you will absolutely love this book! The action takes place on the fictional island of Nollop, which is named for the creator of the famous sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Nollopians are a hyper-literate bunch who delight in the written word, and they admire their glorious founder with a zeal bordering on idolatry, to the extent of building a monument in his honor with the famous sentence blazoned on it. Then the trouble begins: letters from the monument begin falling off, and the Island Council decides that Nollop is trying to speak from beyond the grave. As a result, each fallen letter must be eradicated from both speech and writing in Nollop. Displeased with the growing atmosphere of totalitarian censorship and terror, young Ella Minnow Pea and her family and friends must race against time to save their beloved language. Since the novel is epistolary in form and consists only of letters to and from Nollopians, fewer and fewer letters are used as the novel progresses. I was amazed at Dunn's ability to communicate meaning without some pretty important letters: at first it was okay, because Z was the first letter to fall, but when they lost D, for example, things got a lot harder! It was an incredibly fun intellectual exercise to read this book and try to discover the solution to Nollop's plight. The book also discussed some serious ideas, including censorship, religion, and civil disobedience. I would definitely recommend this book!

I am not sure I enjoyed this novel as much as I thought I would. I didn't find it as thought-provokingly funny as I assumed that it was, judging by the fact that it's a book about letters, pun used here with every intention.

On the other hand it lasts really about a flash. There's a lot of space so the two hundred-odd pages are really just about one hundred. It's quite funny at times, in a heart-warming kind of way.

While I see the author's point here, I am not sure I like the fact that he's actually arguing for science against religion. To say that listening to one's beliefs without scientific reason is comparable to scratching letters from the alphabet because of a belief-based interpretation of an omen of some sort is a bit of a stretch for me. Nonetheless I had a good time with this one. It's light and quick, and take the Enterprise-32 challenge! ( )

Ella Minnow Pea is a fun little fable of wordplay gone wrong. On the tiny island of Nollop a few miles off the coast of South Carolina, a word-loving community lives, reverencing its founder, Nevin Nollop, who came up with the fateful 35-letter sentence that uses all 26 letters of the alphabet.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

For this piece of genius, Nollop is given almost-religious worship among the Nollopians. When a letter tile falls from the monument commemorating his famous sentence, the High Council determines that it is the Spirit of Nollop telling them to excise the letter from their speech and writing. The Nollopians are hesitant but compliant; Z isn't a terrible letter to lose, after all. But that's just the beginning of the madness.

I enjoyed the epistolary nature of the story (though honestly, was it necessary for Dunn to define "epistolary" for us at the start of the book?). The subtitle, "A Novel in Letters," is punnishly clever. The story becomes difficult to read (in a playful way) as more and more letters become illegal. Eventually the novel starts looking like chatspeak... perish the thought!

I'm unsure how to take this book. On one hand it's a lighthearted romp full of clever teasing and fun. But there are darker aspects; some characters die, there is public flogging for using a banned letter, and more than once I felt that Dunn was trying to make this a parable about religion, which doesn't sit particularly well with me. Certainly it's a sharp comment on totalitarian regimes and censorship.

The denouément is just right. Cute's probably the word I want. Still, once you know the outcome I doubt there is much incentive to reread. It's a clever, fun little book but somehow it falls a touch flat. Eh. ( )

This was just a plain fun little book to read! What would happen if the use of certain letters of the alphabet was systematically forbidden? What would you do?

Ella Minnow Pea lives on the fictional island of Nollop, an independent country off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop is so named after Nevin Nollop, creator of the pangram 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.' When a letter falls from the monument to Nollop, the ruling council determines that this is Nollopian divine intervention and that the fallen letter must be stricken from use, both verbally and literally. As more and more letters fall, all Nollopians must learn to cope with the increasingly difficult task of making sure that they neither speak nor write words that include these letters.

The book is told through correspondence between the people who live on Nollop, and Mark Dunn is genuinely quite clever in how he presents these letters as the Nollopians lose the rights to use one letter after another. I can honestly say that I had a fun time with trying to work out not only the new ways that the Nollopians found to speak, but also the solution to their problem. This wasn't a particularly challenging book to read, but it was a lot of fun and well worth the time. Give it a read sometime if you're looking for something amusing, clever and completely escapist. ( )