Fortunately, the Milk . . .: Neil Gaiman

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I bought the milk,” said my father. “I walked out of the corner shop, and heard a noise like this: t h u m m t h u m m. I looked up and saw a huge silver disc hovering in the air above Marshall Road.” It's an astounding tale, starting with an alien abduction, moving swiftly onto a space-time journey to the ship of a vicious pirate queen and a near-death plank-walking, a daring rescue by a time-travelling dinosaur scientist in a hot-air-balloon time machine, and thence through interference with a pre-Colombian human sacrifice, and many, many other adventures, including several involving temporal paradoxes. The story is Gaiman's attempt to write a book that casts fathers in a positive light. After writing The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and finding that a lot of people were giving it to their fathers for Father's Day as a tongue-in-cheek insult, he thought he had better make amends. So... the father as the hero of the day, does it work? I think I should try and pay more attention to my creative process because I'm genuinely not sure at which point I decided I was going to write a riposte to The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and it would be called Fortunately, the Milk and it would be about dads. But I do think that the years of looking at The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and going, "this is not--and it's not even not positive--it's not a good thing for parents," and "I should do something which at least shows the other side of the coin." I suspect that sitting in my head for many years was the starting point. But can I plead my case Your Majesty?"I asked. "I do not know why I am here and what I have been accused of. And, by the way, I thought you were meant to be a Queen."

In the ending, children felt that their father was lying about his adventures as they remembered the similarities between their father's story and their paintings. At this point in your career, are you able to take Stephen King's advice (mentioned in your " Make Good Art" speech) and think to yourself, "This is really great" and just "enjoy it"? My favorite part was when it is revealed that Dad, in a sneaky Keyser Söze-like move, has gleaned all his inspiration from items in the kitchen. If you can't being a kid again at least for an hour and laughing with a sweet story like this one, geez, please look for an empty grave and jump in there, you are already dead and nobody told you! A self-referential gem ... Both author and illustrator are craftsmen at the top of their game, making it look easy' Sunday Times, Children's Book of the YearThis is an excellent book to read aloud to 4th grade kids who are in the process of developing a sense for the absurdities of life. It is mainly about telling stories and that you can make up a great plot about anything, no matter how boring the so-called truth of every-day life is. Small things give you big ideas - and they don't have to make sense. Common Sense is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century. It has good characters. The dad is a funny dad. I also like the brother and sister because they are not stupid. They ask the dad clever questions to try and trap him, but he is good at wiggling out of trouble.

Probably my own personal belief that I don't get to see everything going on all the time. And the more you study anything, the more you realize there are huge unseen worlds going on at any point, whether you're reading books about quantum physics, where you learn that actually, more or less, we are all a bunch of hypothetical particles with an awful lot of space between us, or whether it's studying Henry Mayhew and London labor and the London poor and realizing all of these strange, secret worlds that would've been completely invisible to somebody navigating the streets of London. All worlds are 50% unseen. His two kids are pretty dubious but willing to go along with it for the most part ("Hang on. Piranhas are a freshwater fish. What are they doing in the sea?"). And occasionally they have requests for ponies or "handsome, misunderstood wumpires" to be in the story. It's a fun children's or early middle-grade story, and the illustrations absolutely make it. This would be a great read-aloud book for kids who like wildly imaginative adventures.This hilarious story is perfect for KS2, the plot twists and turns may be challenging but absolutely worth it! Hullo," I said to myself. "That's not something you see every day. And then something odd happened." That is the point of this story, the “what if?” Absurdly fun to read for both adults and kids. Don’t miss it. Indeed", confirmed the King. "And therefore I sentence you to finish this atrocity of a review as soon as possible without using the waking up from a dream scenario. I hate when they do that!" Spoons are excellent. Sort of like forks, only not as stabby.― Neil Gaiman, Fortunately, The Milk About