Monday, July 17, 2017

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn- Book Review

This was a book that started strongly, continued to have fun with the idea, but then as it moved on, I just wanted it to end and then it did!

The story of Ella Minnow Pea takes place on an island where the famous phrase "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog" was created. The creator of the phrase Nevin Nollop is so highly regarded that he is treated almost as a godlike character. The comes into play when letters begin falling off the memorial to him. The island council decides this is fate and begin deeming the letter that has fallen can no longer be used.

The whole story is an epistolary story between Ella and her family and friends. As the first letter is banned, use of it will lead to several punishments including banishment.

As one can guess, letters begin falling off of the sign and each time, the council decides to ban the use of that letter. The letters sent also begin transforming as certain letters are now banned.

This book took a lot of skill to write. It had to be a difficult challenge to continue writing while not using certain letters as the book continued. It was fun reading it in that sense as the author goes with some deep cuts for words to continue telling the story.

The problem is, once the pattern emerges and the story continues, it begins to get a little tedious. The skill is acknowledged to write, but story wise it started to become- let's get this over with already and tie it up.

The other difficulty was trying to distinguish the different character voices in the book. Nothing in the letters being sent lead the reader to a certain character, except for a few kitchen table letters. I had to keep reading the letter's signee to figure out who was speaking.

Overall, it is still a fun and quick book. At just 200 pages, it took an afternoon to read and it was a bit of fun. I gave this one 3.5 stars.

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