The Wonderful O

The fifth of James Thurber’s fairytales for children (of all ages) is shorter on plot than wordplay, but we won’t hold it against him. The plot — which involves some pirates who, while seeking treasure on an island, ban the letter O and all things containing it — does what it’s supposed to, creating a firm structure on which a rhetorical jester can perform his spectacular dance. The result is a dizzying and delightful romp through real and invented lexicons:

And so the locksmith became a lcksmith, and the bootmaker a btmaker, and people whispered like conspirators when they said the names. Love’s Labour’s Lost and Mother Goose flattened out like a pricked balloon. Books were bks and Robinhood was Rbinhd. Little Goody Two Shoes lost her O’s and so did Goldilocks, and the former became a whisper, and the latter sounded like a key jiggled in a lck. It was impossible to read “cockadoodledoo” aloud, and parents gave up reading to their children, and some gave up reading altogether, and the search for the precious jewels went on.

And that’s only the beginning. Thurber’s prose (if you can call it prose) occasionally lapses into rhyme and is filled with alliteration, punning, and truly awe-inspiring verbal invention. The end result is a story that affirms freedom of speech in the most wide-ranging sense as the villains, Black and Littlejack, are soundly defeated.

Though it’s for children, there is, as in other Thurber tales, much for adults as well. Among his other four tales for children are two that we’ve read, Many Moons and The Thirteen Clocks, and both are wonderful. Few other books can surpass them for reading aloud, and they are almost exhaustingly witty. The story is similar in its style of cleverness to The Phantom Tollbooth, though it’s narrower in scope.

My daughters are 9 and 12, and both were drawn in quickly. Younger Daughter laughed often and delightedly. Older Daughter kept making contributions: during the many lists of O-containing things being forbidden, she would toss in suggestions. (Thurber has a penchant for lists, as we remembered from Many Moons, and they are funniest when read at top speed!) If you’re looking for a lighthearted, eminently droll read-aloud that can’t help but cultivate love for verbal repartee, look no further than The Wonderful O.