"The Wonderful O" or Freedom Is Just Another Word...

Who knew that a horrible accident with a porthole of all things would drive a man to become a pirate and outlaw freedom, love, honor and valor from an island nation.  Actually he just outlawed the letter "O", but without the words, the ideas, ideals and people didsn't exist any more either.

This is the premise of a book I've been reading and re-reading with my daughter lately.  Both of us love the story and the surface silliness of it all...trying to talk without o's is quite funny.  And, as she tends to ask insightful questions, I think she gets the deeper idea of the book and how important that is.  But most of all, we love the act of reading it...it's a fun, sometimes rolicking, always lyrical expereince.  Take this excerpt as an example...the pirate Black, having outlawed the "O", hired a lawyer named Hyde to put it into practice and this is one of his rulings (read it fast and fun and loud):

"Almost all the fruits are yours to eat, from the apple to the tangerine, with a good two dozen in between. I'll stick to those that start with P to show you what I mean: the pear, the peach, the plum, the prune, the plantain and pineapple, the pawpaw and papaya. But you will yearn for things you never ate, and cannot tolerate - I know you women - the pomegranate, for one, and the dull persimmon. No grapefruit, by the way. I hate it's bitter juice. I have banned it, under its French name, pamplemousse."

The first time we read it we got to the place in the book where the people were gathering in secret, planning to overthrow Black and his pirate pal, Littlejack.  Led by the poet Andreus and the beautiful maiden Andrea, they were talking about all of the important things they were beginning to miss now that the letter "O" was no longer and the most important things they would get back by defeating the pirate Black  They had listed Hope, Love, Valor and were trying to remember just what the fourth word was and they couldn't quite get there.  As the characters were making their list for the fourth word, so was my daughter--here is her list:

1.  Dog
2.  Soup
3.  Soccer
4.  Potty
5.  Pools
6.  Horse

And on and on...the only word that overlapped between the book list and my daughters list was "money".   And, when we got to the part where they unveiled the fourth word, "Freedom", my daughter was slightly underwhelmed.  She liked some of the words the characters came up with....

"None of these is right," said Andrea. "I'll know it when I hear it." And so, until the setting of the moon, they tried out words with O — imagination and religion, dedication and decision, honor, progeny, and vision. ... And they spent the rest of the night searching for the greatest, trying youth and joy and jubilation, victory and exaltation, languor, comfort, relaxation, money, fortune, non-taxation, motherhood and domesticity, and many anotherhood and icity. But Andrea shook her lovely head at every word the people said, rejecting soul and contemplation, dismissing courtship and elation, and many anothership and ation.

As we talked about it some more, I tried to explain the importance of freedom relative to the other ideas they and she listed.  She just rolled over and asked, quite snarkily I might add, if she was "free to go to sleep now".

I sighed and said yes.