Ella Minnow Pea

By Mark Dunn

This is such a fun novel. It is about an island nation off the coast of North Carolina where the citizens highly value the spoken and written word. Unfortunately, they distrust science and technology. They hold the author of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" Mr Nevill, in a prophet-like, almost God-like regard. So when a letter on the statue in his honor falls to the ground, they have no choice but to banish that letter from their daily lexicon. If the citizens use a word with the offending letter they face serious punishments. As the novel progresses, more and more letters fall from the statue, and therefore out of the novel which is written in letters between people.

This is a really funny and ingenious novel. The townspeople who write the letters have such large vocabularies and when they are challenged and their words are diminished they become even more resourceful.