The wonderful O

Two men backed by a ship's crew land on a pleasant little island where the inhabitants choose not to fight back, but rather acquiesce to their presence, but things get too hard to bear when one of the men begins issuing edicts about the letter O. First they destroy things with the O in their name.

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Then they out and out ban words with the letter O in them. When the gings-n becme t hard t bear, and the peple must get rid of the men. [Trans: When the goings-on become too hard to bear...]

James Thurber, as a children's author at least, has me entirely enchanted. It started with a chance crossing with his book The White Deer, and expanded with my discovery of The Thirteen Clocks. And it is not hard to say that The Wonderful O cemented the deal. I adore his writing. One of the most attractive aspects is the simplicity. It reminded me, to be honest, of The Phantom Tolbooth [Juster], because when something happens in the world of the book, it just happens. It requires no explanation that these things are possible or likely, and harkens back to the joy of the willing suspension of disbelief--because these things are happening and these people are responding, you don't really need to know how or why this very simple and non-magical seeming world has an enchanted castle. It just does. And there is much delight to be had in this.

The Wonderful O only about eight or so pages long, and has a delightfully musical cadence to much of the text. As I read through last night, I felt compelled to be reading it aloud because my mind's ear caught rythms and rhymes scattered throughout the conversations and brief periods of exposition. In the lists of things being destroyed or outlawed, especially, you can find it.

Being a very brief eighty pages or so, the book is well worth the short time to read it.

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A cute book about an island's attempt to function without the letter O when it is banished by pirates. I didn't enjoy it as much as I do Thurber's other works. Still, it was fun to read.

Very riginal. Made me laugh many times thrughut althugh it really makes yu think abut that missing letter.

D yu knw what is it yet?

Clever short story about a villain seeking treasure in a kingdom. The villain lost his mother when she got stuck in a boat's porthole and since then, he has a hatred for the letter 'O'. He bans everything that contains the letter, so that music is limited to zithers, cymbals, and guitars since

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horns, violas an oboes are forbidden. Fun illustrations combined with Thurber's clever wit make this a quick shrt bk t read.

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“Taking a single letter from the alphabet," he said, "should make life simpler."

"I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.”

An odd little story full of wordplay.

What happens when the letter O is banned? Chas! Cnfusin!

Much of the text has a singsong quality--but not all of it. A little uneven. I would actually love to see this performed on stage. It could make a great high school performance, as it would be quite short

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and the wordplay would be very fun.

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James Thurber is amazing. His 'children's' fables hold up the best of his ouvre. This might appeal to other fans of The Phantom Tollbooth.

"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

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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.

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I enjoyed this childrens book. I like how James Thurber plays with words. I think other authors have borrowed from his technique.

Reread it for #1001 summerroadtrip, a tour through Ohio. Reading it this time, I kept having thoughts of how we are dropping letters a lot with our chatting via apps and

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on-line technology. Is the alphabet changing.

Thurber is a man who loved words. I did not know that he went blind. He hired Marc Simont to illustrate his book. I have a copy of the book with the illustrations by Marc Simont. Marc Simont is the winner of the Caldecott Medal.

The back cover tells us that two men visit the island of ooroo on the boat Aeiu in search of jewels. These men start taking away the freedoms of the inhabitants of Ooroo one thing at a time until there is nothing left but cnfusin and chas. The islanders decide that there are 4 words with O that must not be lost, do you know what the 4 words are?

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No Morgan, this isn't the Story of O (stop calling it that).

What a wonderfully outstanding book. James Thurber is a wordsmith and this book shows his talent. For a children's book, this has some great word play. The plot of this book is basically a pirate comes to a town and bans all things that

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have the letter "O" in them. He doesn't like the letter. Thurber is clever enough to make things go out of hand. This book is also an obvious statement on censorship. Remove one letter form the alphabet and the world goes mad. Lesson: Stop censoring words.

I like how Penguin is making these children's books for there Deluxe line. I've never heard of any of these before. I'm more familiar with Thurber's adult humor and cartoons he had done for the New Yorker. I think he was better at those, but this story is worth checking out. I hope they make Walter Mitty into a Deluxe or his other adult stories.

I will say skip the intro for this book and 13 Clocks. I normally don't care about introductions, but Neil Gaiman's and Marc Simont's intros I didn't like at all. They are more about themselves than the book or Thurber. Neither of them are good choices either because neither of them are remotely close to what Thurber wrote. Why not pick someone who write humor books?

Anyway, with that said, this book might make you laugh if you're into word play humor. Yes this book is for children, but it's more like his stories he for for adults too. I'm not a huge fan of the art work in this book, but still fun for all, unless you don't think "O" is wonderful.

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