Customer Reviews

The wonderful O

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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.

"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?

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.

The Wonderful O, by long time New Yorker magazine writer James Thurber (1894-1961), was published over 50 years ago (1957), and the fingers of history leave smudges on the pages of this fanciful tale of a violent and dictatorial Captain Black and his partner Littlejack wreaking havoc when they outlaw all things "O".

The story line is relatively straightforward: In search of jewels, Black and Littlejack, backed by a pirate ship crewed by violence-prone henchmen, take over the government of an island. Black, whose mother was once stuck in a porthole, has what would almost certainly be dubbed PTAD (Post-traumatic Alphabetical Disorder) today, and hates all things with the letter "O". He bans the letter, and even bans objects that contain the letter O. By teaming up with a lawyer (Hyde), legal decisions blunt some of the more disastrous potential effects of the new edicts. Cows, for example, do not need to be eliminated if they are referred to as cattle; geese are okay as long as an individual doesn't leave the flock (becoming a goose).

The Wonderful O is an adult parable rather than a children's book, though it is included in the New York Review Children's Collection. The complexity of the language and themes would challenge the great majority of children who read The Wonderful O, and the targets of Thurber's writing would likely remain opaque to them. What are those targets? First, a brief refresher of the mid-fifties.

When the Wonderful O was written, the national consciousness was still tuned acutely to war, specifically the memory of WW II and the Korean conflict. Joe McCarthy had finally been reined in only two or three years earlier, and though his rabid anti-Communism rants had lost credibility, the Cold War was in full ascendancy. The evils of totalitarianism, and the past brutalities of Stalin and Hitler were fresh in people's minds; Mao Zedong was well on his way to the excesses of power that would eventually kill over 70 million Chinese. Memories of collaborators that aided the Nazi occupation of France were still fresh. The excesses of dictatorial power that the free world witnessed were no less capricious, but considerably more tragic, than eliminating all things "O" from the world. Consciousness of what had already occurred, and fear of what might still happen, provided Thurber with virtually all of the warp, and a good part of the weave, in his literary tapestry about the letter O.

The resistance to evil, a prophetess-like figure named Andrea tells those with the courage to resist Black and Littlejack, revolves around four "O" words: Love, Hope, Valor, and.....you'll have to read the book to find out! Citizens on the island occupied by Black and LIttlejack respond the way the citizens of France did when Hitler invaded, ranging from full cooperation with the tyrants to heroic resistance. Thurber's portrayal of the family and social choices that people must make in the face of tyranny is uncomfortably accurate.

Retrospectively, it's interesting that the word valor is specifically chosen over wisdom; one of Thurber's characters refers to the word wisdom as "too weak". It is also interesting to note that when the fourth "O" word is finally revealed, it turns out to be one that has been bandied about like a rugby ball for the last eight to nine years, often by those most abusive of it.

For those previously unfamiliar with Thurber's work (that would include me), his writing style is amazingly witty, and (appropriate for a friend of E.B. White) grammatically perfect, a combination of qualities that is a joy to experience.

One wonders, were Thurber alive today, if after the Vietnam War, the first and second Gulf Wars, and the current struggle in Afghanistan, he would still be willing to choose valor over wisdom as one of the four antidotal words to oppression. One wonders also if the fourth antidotal word, unnamed until late in the book, has been bludgeoned into triteness by overuse. One will never wonder, though, how Thurber would feel about impositions on one of our most important American rights: that of free speech. Captain Black and Littlejack run seriously aground when they mess with natural law in the Universe of Thurber, specifically the law that allows free, unrestricted, and creative use of language.

"The Wonderful O " is a very clever story with fun and adventure. It is a gripping novel that you don't want to put down because you really want to find out what happens next.
By The Frog Girl of Fremantle (aged 11)

...THE WONDERFUL O is a charming book. It's full of wit, wisdom, and social commentary. It's a great story and plays around with the English language in a most interesting way. This is a book that appeals to both adults and children and would also work well as a text in an upper elementary English class. It's a great book. Oh, yeah. Has anyone seen BRAVEHEART? There's a connection between the two.

I don't know what age this book is written for. The language is a bit difficult and the concept of the pirate who hates the letter O and gets rid of everything with that letter. It is funny and clever. It took me a while to figure out how to read it with all the "O"s missing. My 4 year old is a ways from being able to stick with this book. But it's so unique and clever I am keeping it for him to read when he IS old enough. When I read the info before I purchased it it said something about big words. My boy loves to learn big new words. Just not so many at one time. I did read the first chapter to him and days later he was thinking about the concept of no more O. So it intrigued him even if it is a bit difficult. There are a few illustrations.

My spouse and I read this book aloud to each other, to our great delight. We share Thurber's love of language, and he's a whiz with it. Keep the dictionary handy, or simply revel in the sound and feel of the words. You'll appreciate the letter O, and what it takes to write without it. Like Thurber's _The_Thirteen_Clocks_, this book has no age limit.

If there is any way to get this back in to print, I would buy copies for most children I care about.