The Wonderful O [Audio Cassette]

James Thurber (Author), Melissa Manchester (Performer)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1996 | Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

The delightful tale features two pirate adventurers, Black and Littlejack, who sail to the island of Ooroo in search of treasure. Upon their arrival, Black bans anything and everything to do with the letter "O," and the people of the newly renamed island of R must try to live in utter chas and cnfusin.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Handsomely reprinted, for children who can spell well, is James Thurber's 1957 story The Wonderful O, about a tyrannical pirate who bans everything on an island that contains the letter O - because his mother was once stuck in a porthole, with tragic consequences. Full of word lists and wordplay, with charming illustrations by Marc Simont, it is a verbally ambitious little classic for logophiles. Or, as the pirate would have it, lgphiles." --The Sunday Times (London)

"A playful allegory on love, valor and freedom, and a ceaseless romp with wordplay." --Publishers Weekly

"The Wonderful O, published in 1957, is a tale for children, and a reminder for adults, of the joys of love, liberty, language and, not least, humor. It has pirates and treasure and magic and a message that especially in complacent times must not be forgotten...The Wonderful O is a book worth finding, wherever you can, and reading, as one of its characters concludes, ‘lest we forget.’" –The Wall Street Journal
 
"Among James Thurber's 30 books were several for children. Two reader favorites of the Fifties, The Thirteen Clocks and The Wonderful O, have returned, illustrations by Marc Simont intact. These are funny, richly textured stories that pile on the fantasy and will make middle readers laugh a lot." –The Record (NJ)
 
"The Wonderful O and The 13 Clocks...witty, funny, imaginative tales which will earn Thurber a new generation of admirers. " –The Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate

“No one else could think up a fairy story, tale, legend, exercise or what have you, based upon ‘O’ alone. Certainly no one else could bring it off if he had. Mr. Thurber, however, can, did, and does. No more worthy ‘O’ words could go before The Wonderful O than another O Wonderful.” –Lewis Nichols, The New York Times

“A satirical adventure story about two scoundrels, one of whom has a violent dislike of the letter ‘O,’ and a search for buried treasure.” –Sam Zolotow, The New York Times

“A satire on dictatorship and a celebration of the spirit of freedom essential to the lively pursuit of happiness…The form of the story is wonderfully adroit.” –Charles Poole, The New York Times

“A prodigious performance. As a medium in the great séance of letters he is incomparable; he has only to utter an incantatory moan, and words levitate, phrases rap out unexpected messages, and whole sentences turn into ectoplasm.” –The New Yorker

“The loveliest and liveliest of parables. The end is a real surprise.” –Harper’s Magazine

“Excellent Thurber. Besides being a highly original fairy tale and a rollicking linguistic gambol, The Wonderful O is a still further fable for our time–perhaps the best and most serious that Thurber has written.” –New York Herald Tribune Book Review

“A dazzling feat of verbal virtuosity, with frequent lapses into interior rhyme.” –Library Journal

“While ostensibly for children who will love its wit, its rhythms, and its free-flowing imagination, it will speak irresistibly to older minds and funnybones and, one might add, heart.” –Boston Herald

“Perhaps the worthiest contemporary fabulist in English. His effects are almost musical. He gets us to laugh and gulp down another lesson in the value of human liberty at one end and the same time.” –San Francisco Examiner

“Pure and unadulterated Thurber, and that means Thurber at his zaniest. Not since Lewis Carroll has such foolishness masked such wisdom; and besides, it’s a gale of fun from start to finish.” –St. Louis Globe Democrat

“Like all good fables, it is told in simple language and in a manner children can delight in.” –Chicago Tribune

"Witty...extremely clever...It has a moral." –The Christian Science Monitor

“O, wonderful! James Thurber's grown-up kids' books, The Wonderful O and The 13 Clocks, long out of print, are back -- rich with ogres and oligarchs, riddles and wit. What distinguishes them is not just quixotic imagination but Thurber's inimitable delight in language. The stories beg to be read aloud...Thurber captivates the ear and captures the heart.” —Newsweek

“A disadvantaged world without O is amusingly imagined in James Thurber's 1957 children's book, The Wonderful O, about pirates who land on an island called Ooroo and tyrannically expunge their patron letter.” —Ottawa Citizen --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

Grammy Award winning artist Melissa Manchester is one of the most compelling female singer/songwriters in contemporary music. She has also starred in films and television. Here she brings her wonderful voice to an inspiring story. --This text refers to an alternate Audio Cassette edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Dove Kids (June 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787101931
• ISBN-13: 978-0787101930
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,667,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Books on Cassette > Authors, A-Z > ( T ) > Thurber, James

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, no -- no O, July 3, 2002

By 

R. Tiedemann "Sunnye" (Bellevue, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wonderful O (Hardcover)

Pirates come to plunder a small island. When the spokesman tells them they have no treasure "except the blue of the water and the pink of our maidens' cheeks and lips, and the green of our fields," the pirates don't believe them and search high and low.

Meanwhile, the captain of the ship, who hates the letter O, issues an edict. "I'll get rid of the letter O, in upper case and lower...All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them." Thus objects and words with Os are banished from the land forever.

Disaster! Imagine the impact on community life! No houses, cottages or bungalows -- only huts, shacks, sheds, shanties and cabins without logs. No dough for the baker, no gold for the goldsmith, no forge for the blacksmith, no cloth for the tailor, no chocolate for the candymaker. (NOW you've gone too far!) No poetry without Os.

Thurber writes, "A man named Otto Ott, when asked his name, could only stutter. Ophelia Oliver repeated hers, and vanished from the haunts of men."

"We can't tell shot from shoot or hot from hoot," the blacksmith pointed out in a meeting with other townsfolk. "Oft becomes the same as foot, and odd the same as dodo. Something must be done at once or we shall never know what we are saying."

The islanders decide that there are four words with an O that must not be lost. Hope, love and valor are three of them and the fourth is the point of the story.

This is a beautifully written, rhythmic tale. THE WONDERFUL O will appeal to everyone who loves language. The story is a challenge to the imagination of the reader.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chas and cnfusin reign supreme, December 30, 2003

By 

JLind555 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wonderful O (Hardcover)

"The Wonderful O" is a delightful book for our younger readers about a dastardly group of pirates who invade the island of Ooroo looking for treasure. Oh wow, with a name like Ooroo, this place is just asking for trouble. Seems that Black, the pirate chief, hates the letter O, because when he was a child his mother got stuck in a porthole, and he couldn't pull her in, so he had to push her out. Poor Moms. And now Black is about to consolidate his capture and takeover of Ooroo by banishing from speech and print every word and name which contains the letter O. So how are we to pronounce Ooroo? Or Otto Ott, whose name comes out sounding like a terminal stutter? Or consider the case of poor Ophelia Oliver, who, when she lost her O's, vanished from the haunts of men.

Thurber has written a hilarious book showing the pure chas and cnfusin that reign when the language is stripped of its O's. How can you tell a cat from a cat? Or a bat from a bat? Strip the O from the language and we will all be indeed bgne and webegne. Not to mention losing words like hope, love, valor, and the greatest of all, freedom.

Black may have stripped the language of all its O's but he can't break the people's spirit, and eventually he and his crew hoist anchor and sail away into the sunset, leaving the people and their island with all their O's intact. Kids will love this book for the hilarious play on words, as well as for the message it gets across. A wonderful bk (oops, I mean book) for youngsters and oldsters alike. How could there be youngsters, or oldsters, or books, if there weren't any O?

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't live fully without the letter O or this wonderful book, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wonderful O (Hardcover)

I read The Wonderful O years ago as a young adult and find myself recommending the book to others. But, alas, the book is out of stock; I mean, the bk is ut f stck. Please, Mr/Ms Publisher, put this wnderful bk back n the bkshelves. As yu can see, we can't live fully withut the letter, r withut this wnderful bk.