Ella Minnow Pea

A Novel in Letters

By: Mark Dunn

Narrated by: Lauren Ezzo, Renata Friedman, Michael Crouch, Sara Morsey

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.

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 phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet: “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 "a love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere" (Myla Goldberg, best-selling author of Bee Season).

©2021 Mark Dunn (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“There’s the whiff of a classic about Ella Minnow Pea.” (The Christian Science Monitor)

“A love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere.” (Myla Goldberg)

“A curiously compelling...satire of human foibles, and a light-stepping commentary on censorship and totalitarianism.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

A lighter version of The Hand Maidens Tale

In a society governed by letters, what happens when they start disappearing, and the powers that be take it as a sign?

Wonderful

I laughed out loud a few times. I think this was a great way to “read” this.

Amazing book

Excellent performance, important message, full of discussion material, thought provoking. 10 stars. I loved this book.

If you love words and language this book is for you.

This was a humorous and delightful tale. I ordered a physical copy of the book in order to study all of the vocabulary words. This was a fantastic journey and I highly recommend this book.

Perfect title for this story

If you like words in all their glorious and varied uses and meanings, I think you will enjoy this book. The writing is intelligent and imaginative. The plot is a pointed message about the dangers of authoritarianism, clothed in an absurdity. At the time of this review that is particularly apt and I appreciated it.

I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it, rather than listened. The chorus of narrators are theatrical and highly emotive. That, and a frequent recitation of the alphabet, became irritating as the story progressed, rather than increasing my empathy for the characters.

The ending is the weakest part of this listen, feeling to me to be rather "clever" and contrived, like the author had painted his characters into a corner and had to find a quick way out. It didn't do justice to the serious topic of the satire.

The narration was wonderful

Such impassioned voices added incredible depth to the story. Thank you!
Ironically I am required to leave a 15 word minimum review.

Decently acted trite story

Audiobook couldn't improve a weak storyline that really didn't wow. The author could have done more with the concept, as the entire story through letters- while catchy- was rather limiting, and curtailed how entertaining the story could be.

The over use of big words.

This book would have been much more enjoyable if the author has relaxed and enjoyed the use of the English language. I understand the need to exercise as many words as possible but it became tedious after a while.