--- product_id: 7416978 title: "Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters" price: "€ 21.97" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.sk/products/7416978-ella-minnow-pea-a-novel-in-letters store_origin: SK region: Slovakia --- # Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters **Price:** € 21.97 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters - **How much does it cost?** € 21.97 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.sk](https://www.desertcart.sk/products/7416978-ella-minnow-pea-a-novel-in-letters) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description 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, bestselling author of Bee Season ). Review: My new favourite book. - At a mere 208 pages, Ella Minnow Pea is a lexically delicious little book. It’s also a wonderful allegory (or perhaps a satire?) of fascism, censorship, the corruption of absolute power, theocracies, and the apathy (or fear) that allows evil to triumph over good. "We are a nation of letter-writers, who, in the absence of reliable telephone service or the existence of electronic mail, have cultivated our hardship far beyond all expectation." The novel takes the form of letters from the inhabitants of an independent little fictional island called Nollop. It takes its name from the founding father Nevin Nollop, who is credited with discovering the wonderfully succinct sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” in which each letter of the alphabet appears. This sentence is Nollop (the island)’s claim to fame, and it is proudly displayed in the town square. However, one night the letter ‘Z’ crashes to the ground. The council takes this as a sign from Nollop himself that the letter Z is unnecessary anyway – well, we hardly use it, after all – and so they decide to ban its use. Anyone caught using the aforementioned forbidden letter will be placed in the stocks, whipped, exiled or executed. This of course means that all the books should be destroyed. As more letters fall, they too are excised, until the task of saving the beloved island of Nollop’s people from incommunicable oblivion falls to Ella. And she is running out of both time and letters. "Not only does it cripple communication between islanders, it builds rock walls between hearts." As a society of letter-writers who leave lengthy essays rather than notes and who will never say in five words what could be said in fifty, the novel can be a bit wordy… But that’s the point. As letters are stricken from the vocabulary of the Nollopians, the letter-writers must find ever more roundabout ways of expressing themselves, leading to some fantastic word-creating and lexical acrobatics. I particularly enjoyed the new words for expressing days of the week in the wake of the loss of ‘D’: Monty, Toes, Wetty, Thurby, Fribs, Satto-gatto and Sunshine. Thus, despite the overly complex and abnormally formal way that the Nollopians speak, the whimsy of it grew on me until I wished that everyone talked like they did, always and forever. And as the letters become more and more scarce, their spectacularly creative ways of expressing themselves are limited more and more, until they cannot speak except through language such that you might find in a teenager’s text messages – the horror! "In the sanctuary of my thoughts, I am a fearless renegade. Yet in the company of the children I cringe and cower in a most depreciating way." While the progressively lipogrammatic form and verbose style of the novel are more than enough to make me fall madly in love with it, the plot itself is effective and complex. The characters are distinct and lovable, as their relationships and the effects of their actions and the loss of their very identities filter out through the letters. From the man who must rename himself Prince Valiant-the-Comely to avoid a forbidden letter in his name, to a woman who decides to cover herself entirely in paint, to a family that march into the council house dressed as ducks and waving Quaker oats over their heads as they quack to protest the loss of the letter Q, the characters make this engrossing. Furthermore, the ever-growing power-madness of the Council is chillingly similar to theocratic/ideocratic dictatorships such as ISIS, Nazi Germany and the second Bush Administration. Neighbours turn on neighbours and any sense of privacy is obliterated by censorship and spying. "Today we queried, questioned, and inquired. Promise me that come tomorrow, we will not stop asking why." The novel, while dazzlingly clever and scrumptiously linguistic is a treat to read. The characters are just mad enough to be utterly realistic and the moral implications are profoundly engaging. It’s a small, whimsical and wonderfully intelligent book, and a pleasure to read. I wish it had been longer, but not a word (or letter) was wasted. Review: Fun spelling story - This was hilarious! A very sad, and funny story. (No idea if the highlight was supposed to be funny, but it made me snort) ## Features - Great product! ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #10,416 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #8 in Epistolary Fiction (Books) #105 in Fiction Satire #967 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,183 Reviews | ## Images ![Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71+Hu7FhtlL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ My new favourite book. *by K***K on September 23, 2015* At a mere 208 pages, Ella Minnow Pea is a lexically delicious little book. It’s also a wonderful allegory (or perhaps a satire?) of fascism, censorship, the corruption of absolute power, theocracies, and the apathy (or fear) that allows evil to triumph over good. "We are a nation of letter-writers, who, in the absence of reliable telephone service or the existence of electronic mail, have cultivated our hardship far beyond all expectation." The novel takes the form of letters from the inhabitants of an independent little fictional island called Nollop. It takes its name from the founding father Nevin Nollop, who is credited with discovering the wonderfully succinct sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” in which each letter of the alphabet appears. This sentence is Nollop (the island)’s claim to fame, and it is proudly displayed in the town square. However, one night the letter ‘Z’ crashes to the ground. The council takes this as a sign from Nollop himself that the letter Z is unnecessary anyway – well, we hardly use it, after all – and so they decide to ban its use. Anyone caught using the aforementioned forbidden letter will be placed in the stocks, whipped, exiled or executed. This of course means that all the books should be destroyed. As more letters fall, they too are excised, until the task of saving the beloved island of Nollop’s people from incommunicable oblivion falls to Ella. And she is running out of both time and letters. "Not only does it cripple communication between islanders, it builds rock walls between hearts." As a society of letter-writers who leave lengthy essays rather than notes and who will never say in five words what could be said in fifty, the novel can be a bit wordy… But that’s the point. As letters are stricken from the vocabulary of the Nollopians, the letter-writers must find ever more roundabout ways of expressing themselves, leading to some fantastic word-creating and lexical acrobatics. I particularly enjoyed the new words for expressing days of the week in the wake of the loss of ‘D’: Monty, Toes, Wetty, Thurby, Fribs, Satto-gatto and Sunshine. Thus, despite the overly complex and abnormally formal way that the Nollopians speak, the whimsy of it grew on me until I wished that everyone talked like they did, always and forever. And as the letters become more and more scarce, their spectacularly creative ways of expressing themselves are limited more and more, until they cannot speak except through language such that you might find in a teenager’s text messages – the horror! "In the sanctuary of my thoughts, I am a fearless renegade. Yet in the company of the children I cringe and cower in a most depreciating way." While the progressively lipogrammatic form and verbose style of the novel are more than enough to make me fall madly in love with it, the plot itself is effective and complex. The characters are distinct and lovable, as their relationships and the effects of their actions and the loss of their very identities filter out through the letters. From the man who must rename himself Prince Valiant-the-Comely to avoid a forbidden letter in his name, to a woman who decides to cover herself entirely in paint, to a family that march into the council house dressed as ducks and waving Quaker oats over their heads as they quack to protest the loss of the letter Q, the characters make this engrossing. Furthermore, the ever-growing power-madness of the Council is chillingly similar to theocratic/ideocratic dictatorships such as ISIS, Nazi Germany and the second Bush Administration. Neighbours turn on neighbours and any sense of privacy is obliterated by censorship and spying. "Today we queried, questioned, and inquired. Promise me that come tomorrow, we will not stop asking why." The novel, while dazzlingly clever and scrumptiously linguistic is a treat to read. The characters are just mad enough to be utterly realistic and the moral implications are profoundly engaging. It’s a small, whimsical and wonderfully intelligent book, and a pleasure to read. I wish it had been longer, but not a word (or letter) was wasted. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fun spelling story *by Z***. on May 11, 2026* This was hilarious! A very sad, and funny story. (No idea if the highlight was supposed to be funny, but it made me snort) ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Harrowing Fun! *by F***O on March 17, 2026* Ella Minnow Pea is a harrowing and cautionary tale about the dangers of taking things a bit too far. In this case, an island "nation's" fondness for one of its founding fathers, Nevin Nollop, the "creator" of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." However, it is really a work outlining important but ignored aspects of language, and English in particular. That the very literate island folk worship Nollop for the esteem he brought them is somewhat belayed by the fact that the above pangram could be two letters shorter just by saying "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." The islanders hadn't noticed this in 100 years?? Anyway, tragedy strikes and rather than carry on rationally, the islanders proceed to make things worse by discarding the use of letters from the language, fortunately the less used ones at first. This causes much overthinking and a lot of consternation as life on the island proceeds to fall apart about as quickly as Nollop's memorial statue. It gets to the point where we think we might be entering "Lord of the Flies" or "Wicker Man" territory, but fortunately, about the midway point the novella makes a more humorous inflection that points to a soft if zany landing for our characters, though not before a lot of damage has been done. Now, author Dunn took the road of lipograms and removing letters when there was just as good a chance (and this could have been a characteristic of island life before the story begins) that the island folk would have been required that all their sentences contain all 26. As harrowing and confounding as this zany lexographic quirk of island life might have been--it just might have been possible! (Ahem). Maybe a sequel could be dreamed up?? Dunn is pretty good at the human psychology underlying the events that unfold, but doesn't dig too deeply into the backgrounds of the villains, so we don't get a good angle on their causal motivations. There's also something of a red herring about stateside real estate developers that you might think come into play later on but don't. That, said, the novel is fun if a bit too serious at times. I suppose it could be argued that without language we'd all turn into savages, but the mood shifts here are a tad exaggerated. ## Frequently Bought Together - Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters - S. - Cain's Jawbone --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.sk/products/7416978-ella-minnow-pea-a-novel-in-letters](https://www.desertcart.sk/products/7416978-ella-minnow-pea-a-novel-in-letters) --- *Product available on Desertcart Slovakia* *Store origin: SK* *Last updated: 2026-06-02*