Covering "Ella Minnow Pea"
by Bennett Holzworth, (2 comments)
“Ella Minnow Pea” by Mark Dunn is a pleasure to read. The title alone made me want to read the book. It was a nice break from the usually dull, but informative design books I have been reading. I won’t go into great detail about the book, but the writing was very impressive.
A quick synopsis of this work of fiction. The main character, Ella Minnow Pea, lives in a small island country off the coast of South Carolina. The island is named Nollop after one of their former leaders Nevin Nollop. Mr. Nollop created the famous line “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. For this he is made into a national hero and years after his passing he is nearly worshipped. The famous pangram “the quick brown fox jumps…” is placed in tiles under the dome of city hall. When the tiles start to fall, the community elders see this as a post-mortum sign from Nollop to ban the specified fallen letters from use. Since this book is written in letter form, from specific characters in the community, the written letters must abide by the ever changing laws. I would go on, but I don’t want to ruin the rest of the book. I can’t imagine the time it took to write this book. As the letters continue to be banned, the more entertaining the writing becomes. The ending totally ties everything together and is a delightful surprise.
I wish I was a little more literarily inclined to get everything out of this book, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it despite my incompetencies in this area. There are quite a few reviews on amazon if you would like to get a more literary review. I would like to cover an area that I know a bit more about.
When I picked up Ella Minnow Pea from the library I was shocked that the cover was completely different from the one I had previously seen. Where was the AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers award winning design that I had wanted to see in person. After viewing the updated cover, I had planned to write a post about how good design is always sacrificed for marketability. I figured some big wig at the publishing house had decided that the award winning cover wasn’t enough like other covers out there, and that it should look like everything else. Well, apparently I am wrong. The first cover I had seen was the paperback version. The cover from the library was the original hard back version. I wouldn’t say the green original cover is horrible, it just seems to not fit the book as well. It seems to be too light hearted for such a substantial work. This book is written in a playful manner, but the subject matter is about oppression and governmental control. It seems as though the cover should reflect both of these qualities. The book is also very clean and tight in its use of words. Every word is central to this book. The paperback cover just works for this book: clean, classic but still playful. After seeing good book covers discarded for the poorly designed movie poster adaptation after the book has been made into a movie, it is nice to see a cover improve with age. I think it is safe to say that this book would be next to impossible to make into a movie. Of course you know what happens when someone says something is impossible.
One other note about the AIGA award winning cover. In the book “365: AIGA Year in Design 24” they show three different covers. Each one had a different illustration on it (one cover showing only the woman, one showing only the minnow and one showing just the peas), instead of the one you see on amazon with all three illustrations on one cover. In the description in “365: AIGA” the designer said they designed the cover after old fashioned flash cards. I wish they would have kept this design and had three different covers instead of combining them into one. Why is it that anything unique only seems to come in small quantities or limited editions. Maybe this book was redesigned for profitability after all, but it is still more effective than the original.
Comments (2)
Adrian said:
B,
Thanks for bringing this book to my attention. It sounds pretty interesting. His other book, “Welcome to Higby” sounds interesting, too. That one uses biblical quotations as the theme in a similar way to how “Ella Minnow Pea” uses the alphabet.
I would never pick that book up off the table based on the green cover. You can always judge a book by it’s cover. I do it all the time. I wonder if graphic designers are worse about this than everyone else. At Barnes & Noble, I can’t help but be seduced by the cover designs. With so many books that I have never heard of, design is the only criteria other than the title that can give me clues about whether it is a book that I would like. I can’t read every single book, so the cover is going to have to sell it to me.
When I worked at Costco, I stocked the book section for a short time. Costo gets only the top sellers or the new releases from popular authors. What was interesting was that the design for the well known authors was almost non-existent. The authors name was almost always larger than the name of the book. The author’s name is almost always embossed, or metallic, drop-shadowed, or has some other gimmick done to it. I think there is something wrong with that. Most authors probably don’t have much to do with the “marketing” of their book, but it sure seems important to me. I usually feel the same way about musicians who have their picture on the front of their albums. Are you buying music, or an artist? Are you buying a book or an author? I got off track. Sorry.
Posted on July 14, 2004
Debbi Mercado said:
I am looking for an old copy of this book because I totally agree with you! This is one of my all time favorite books and one I love to give as a gift. Unfortunately, I lent mine to someone and never got it back (of course, I cannot remember who that was). I dearly want another copy and when I went online to order one, I was shocked by the picture showing the new green cover. The old cover absolutely captured the charm of this book, whereas the green one is just as you say, more eye-catching and probably more marketable. What a shame. I was pleased to see that someone else shared my disappointment.
Posted on February 23, 2008