I don’t know what reading bug has bit me lately, but I’ve been consuming books like a voracious preying mantis. Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn is a great book. It is a collection of letters from Ella’s family back and forth during a tumultuous time on their island. The elders have decided that certain letters of the alphabet are no longer needed. As they are forbidden, with the threat of death, from using these alphabetic characters they are very careful not to use them in their letters back and forth. It becomes very interesting, and a bit unnerving, reading entire chapters without certain letters of the alphabet. Towards the end I found myself feeling trapped, and it was truly comforting to be able to express myself using any letter I chose. In some ways this book reminds me of Mark Twain’s “A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language“.
I had never heard of Mark Dunn before reading a wikipedia article about the pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” A pangram is a phrase in which each of the letters of the alphabet is used.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the English language, or the tyranny that a psycho government can press upon its citizens. I am eager to read his other books.
