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 pangram, “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.

This book is absolutely hilarious, reading how Ella slowly learns to substitute words as more and more letters are banned. ‘Day’ becomes ‘sun-to-sun’ when ‘d’ disappears and then ‘night-to-night’ when ‘u’ disappears. Lovely book and a quick read. I read it in one sitting – didn’t take more than an hour or two.