Inventive, creative, sweet, and redeedming, Ella Minnow Pea (sound it out: LMNOP) lives on the fictional island of Nollop, in a society that reveres the inventor of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." When letters start falling off the sign in the center of town, the town Council takes it as a sign from Nollop that those letters are no longer to be used, either spoken or written. Succeeding in "Enterprise 32" - coming up with a pangram shorter than Nollop's - is the only way to save the quickly crumbling society. Told in letters to and from Ella, her mother, her aunt, her cousin Tassie, and other townspeople, Ella Minnow Pea is almost Orwellian, but Ella's optimism and determination keeps it from being quite that dark; nevertheless there is a strong message (without being preachy). Recommended!

But we are our own cavalry. The only cavalry there is. (Tassie, 121)