Ella Minnow Pea

This Post is Spoiler Free!

GUYS! THIS BOOK! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I am legitimately shaking right now. Or bouncing. I’m not sure which. Maybe it’s my brain that is shaking? I don’t even know. All I know is that Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn is now my new favorite book. It is a book I will cherish for the rest of my life. I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!!!! 

This is going to be more of a fangirling session than a proper book review, but who cares? I certainly don’t. This is my blog, and I will get as excited as I please on it!

Okay so here’s the deal. I picked this book up because it was mentioned in a meme (I love the internet). It seemed intriguing. It’s told 100% in the form of letters, which I absolutely loved. I’ll be honest… It’s the first book I’ve ever read like that, though I have read short stories and fanfiction told in the same manner! In any case, it’s about a girl who lives on an island that practically worships a man named Nevin Nollop, as he was the one to have written the sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” (This is all fiction, by the way. According to Google, the actual man who wrote that sentence was Roberto Baretta.) Anyways, the island’s Council begins to ban letters as they fall off of the shrine memorializing Nollop, and that’s the whole basis of the story.

It was FASCINATING to read what the characters wrote to each other as different letters were banned. By the end, though, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to read, and at times I had to even read some words out loud to understand them. But this book was written so well! I read the whole thing in one sitting (which wasn’t hard. It was only 208 pages), and I would read it again any day. The character development was beautiful, the relationships between the characters was beautiful, the way language was portrayed was beautiful. AND IT WAS SO INTERESTING! Imagine living in a world/place where you had to limit what you said or the people around you would turn on you, all because of a cult mindset?

But seriously, please pick up the book. I absolutely loved it. There was one point where I just started sobbing (and I mean full sobbing where I was clutching the book to my chest and shaking like a chihuahua). There was another point where I thought I was going crazy. And finally, the climax of the book, I was legitimately yelling. I’m so glad I wasn’t reading this in the middle of the night, because I possibly would have woken my neighbors… 

I am so glad I read this book. It is everything I didn’t know I needed!

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

My Next Read:

Brass Carriages and Glass Hearts by Nancy Campbell Allen: