English is not my mothers language. Oh darn well it is but we have always spoken Dutch at home :)
Anyways I am sure I missed some jokes but I did get a lot of them as well. I love the fact that some books keep you thinking, even when you are done.

I was wondering how easy/hard it would be not to use the letter z anymore. I think writing would not be that hard but talking. auch.
4.5 stars.

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.

This book is absolutely hilarious, reading how Ella slowly learns to substitute words as more and more letters are banned. ‘Day’ becomes ‘sun-to-sun’ when ‘d’ disappears and then ‘night-to-night’ when ‘u’ disappears. Lovely book and a quick read. I read it in one sitting – didn’t take more than an hour or two.

This is a great book! Very clever and funny. Anybody who loves the way the English language works would probably enjoy this book. Be warned – you will probably end up reading some of the later parts out loud…if you ever read it, you will understand why I say this!!

I adored this book. It’s a lightning fast read, letters back and forth between people who’re governed by lunatics who’re swiftly banning the use of certain letters in writing and speech. Employing a wealth of highbrow vocabulary words, the writing becomes even wackier as the letters disappear. I laughed out loud frequently at the circumlocution and creative spelling.

Plotwise, it’s set on a hypothetical independent island that reveres Nollop, the coiner of the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Letters keep falling from the commemorative statue, and the penalties for using these letters that have fallen from Nollop’s favour lead to strict penalties, eventually to expulsion. Can our heroes save their culture? Can they save the English language?

You want to find out. I promise.

Good book. Somewhere along the lines of Fahrenheit 451, only approached from a different angle. Ella Minnow Pea is set on a small utopian-type island named for one Nevin Nollop, that linguistic genius who first penned the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Nollop’s memory is immortalized in both the love and prowess the island’s inhabitants have for language and a statue erected in the town square in his honor featuring the famous phrase. All is well in life on the island until suddenly the letters on the statue begin to fall from the phrase, moving the island’s governing council to declare the falling letters to be communication from beyond the grave from their beloved linguistic ancestor and begin barring the usage of the fallen letters.

I liked the epistolary form Dunn takes for this novel. The letters are written by various island inhabitants, most from the story’s heroine, a young girl for whom the book is named. As letters drop from Nollop’s statue and are subsequently banned from use on the island of Nollop, they disappear from the letters comprising the book as well.

Ella, like Fahrenheit 451 and other dystopian novels, has myriad subtle messages about the dangers of totalitarianism and allowing one’s rights to be taken without a struggle; the book is, however, more lighthearted and not quite so dark as other dystopias.

A quick, enjoyable read. It is, as Ella describes itself, “a quirky novel with pages of zany, jumbled lexicon.”

Rating: 4*/5

A charming idea that ended up being a trifle tedious in execution. Wordplay ought to be fun!

I heard an interview with the author on NPR and was totally fascinated by the concept of this novel. I can’t wait to get into it.