by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 20, 2009

"The Vowels tended to be smug and stuck up," writes Priscilla Turner. She's a teacher and an illustrator, but this lesson didn't come from an English book. It's a strange story in which all the characters are letters of the alphabet - and they don't get along! This odd book chronicles "The War Between Vowels and Consonants," and Whitney had her brother create funny drawings of this strange society of letters!

"For as long as any letter could remember, Vowels and Consonants had been enemies," Priscilla writes. He includes a pun to explain why consonants didn't trust vowels. ("The long and short of it is, they are sly, cunning, two-faced creatures...") The Consonants thought the Vowels were all sissies because they weren't making "good, strong, snapping noises" like all Consonants do. And ominously, the book's first page includes a dedication to "all those Letters who perished in the great war."

It's fun to imagine a society of letters, and Whitney contributed some very imaginative drawings. There's consonants in top hats watching a B and an X in the boxing ring. But the vowels sit in rapt attention in the boxes of an opera house, watching a singer whose body is an E. My favorite drawing shows a mother and father Z - both capital letters - escorting their children, two lowercase Z's. As their eyes scowl over mouthless faces, the littlest z wears a smile, and waves at one of the vowel children - the littlest A.

It's a surprisingly violent story. A taunting P hurls a rock, which is met with a spear, which is met with a catapult, and eventually a whole page is dedicated to the word "WAR!" Soon the hospitals are filled with "hundreds of wounded letters." And of course, the Y's were a house divided. ("Some fought for the Consonants and others for the Vowels," and some Y's even became spies!)

It seems like Whitney was inspired by actual war scenes - drawing rifle-carrying lines of Consonants crossing a stone bridge, like in "Gone With the Wind." There's aerial bombardment, with Consonants wearing World War I fighter helmets, and large sea battles like the Revolutionary War. But soon the letters confront something even more terrifying. An enormous scrawl of formless scribbled lines. He's not afraid of the letter paratroopers or the shock troops of fierce capital letters. In the end he's defeated when the Consonants and Letters join together.

They spell out the word "STOP."

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.