“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. The result is both 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 by Mark Dunn
To reflect the creative structure of this novel, I designed an interactive reading experience through a conceptual form. Each chapter is contained in a hardcover, miniature book. There are sixteen books total. Their shape gets progressively smaller and shifts from a rectangle to a perfect circle. As Ella creatively navigates the loss of certain letters from her ability to communicate, the reader also experiences the shrinking of her alphabetic world.
The wood case is designed to hold all sixteen books and function as a seesaw. The continuous shifting balance caused by the absence of chapters affects the perception of the reading experience.
Ella Minnow Pea
2016
Plywood seesaw book case, 16 Pieces, Hard cover binding
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