Archive for February 16, 2010
The tile falls…..
Posted by: Lizzy Stewart
Book: Ella Minnow Pea (purchase on Amazon)
Ella Minnow Pea is the story of a small island called Nollop. So named because it was once home to Nevin Nollop; a local hero responsible for the famous pangram ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’; the shortest sentence to contain all letters of the alphabet. The much lauded and revered Nollop is immortalised on a stone cenotaph upon which his famous sentence is written out in tiles reminding islanders of their rich linguistic heritage. Until…
“On Monday, July 17, a most intriguing thing took place: one of the tiles from the top of the cenotaph at town center came look and fell to the ground. A young girl here, one Alice Butterworth, discovered the fallen tile at the base of the statue, carefully gathered up the bits and shards, and quickly conveyed them to the offices of the High Island Council. Tiny Alice delivered these fragments into the hands of the most senior Gordan Willingham who promptly called an emergency meeting of that lofty body to glean purpose and design from the sudden and unexpected detachation.”
Eventually it is decided by the powers that be that the fallen ‘Z’ is a sign that that very letter should be struck from the English language. And so ‘Z’ gets banned. Totally. No one may speak it or write it whatsoever. Craziness. Anyway thats pretty much what happens in the first letter (it’s all written in letters from the eponymous Ella’ and thats pretty much what I drew. I have a feeling my posts on this are going to be all over the place. I want to try out a fair few ways of dealing with the text because…well…I guess you’ll see why as it goes a long. Things…uh…deteriorate to say the least. Anyway this is a mix of pencil and digital and was a nice excuse to draw a wise looking bearded man!
