Fortunately, the Milk

We own this book on audible and this is our second physical copy. If they created a coloring book, we’d own that too. This is my 9 year olds comfort read. He reads it 3 times a week minimum. The story is funny, wholesome, and great for all ages.

That's the best way I can sum this up. Fortunately, The Milk is a funny, silly adventure that reminds me of nothing more than the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The style of zany absurdist comedy combined with a romp through space and time is just too strong a resemblance to be a coincidence. Given that Neil Gaiman knew Douglas Adams in life, I would say it's likely an homage to his work.This was the latest pick for me and my son to read together and discuss. We are both Neil Gaiman fans and both enjoyed it thoroughly. A significant change of pace from his usual genre, but very well done. Mr. Gaiman is a master of his craft, and I can't wait until my son is old enough for me to introduce his other works.

If you mention the name Neil Gaiman in certain nerdy circles, you are likely to get a lot of high pitched squealing and gushing about the amazement that is Gaiman. And a lot of girls like him, too.Wanting to raise my kids to be Proper Geeks, I thought it might be time to instill them with a love of Neil Gaiman now – you've gotta start them early, you know! And when I got my hands on a copy of Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman, I knew I’d found just the book to start them off with.If you or your kids like pirates, dinosaurs, aliens, ponies, vampires, cute quirky British families, traveling through time and space, breakfast cereal with milk, well illustrated and funny novels or even just one of those things – this one is a safe bet.I read this in one sitting and knew immediately that I wanted it to be our next Family Read-Aloud. My husband offered to read it last weekend to the kids, but warned them that we might not finish it in one sitting, because it’s 100 pages and they had school in the morning and – yeah, we finished it in one sitting.Partly because there really is no natural breaking point in the story and partly because it was just too funny to put down. My husband is a terrific story teller and he had fun voicing all the different characters and the kids adored the illustrations (though my ever observant hubby would point out that a few of the illustrations don’t quite match up accurately to the story).After we finished reading, I handed the book over to my seven year old so he could read it himself and properly pour over all the illustrations on his own time. There are a lot of illustrations to pore over with a lot of intricate details and as an added bonus, this book is a great vocabulary builder that will be a nice challenge for my advanced reader.It’s not very often that you find a book marketed for 8-12 year olds that the whole family will enjoy. Gaiman throws in a few ponies for the four year old girl set and lots of fun jokes for the parents to chuckle over and all the aliens, vampires, pirates and dinosaurs that a boy (or really any kid) could ask for. This is truly a book that has it all!

Depending upon how you look at things, my kids are either very fortunate or dismally unfortunate. They get great stories all the time about, well, everything. So there is the story about the Troll Bridge and Goblin Town and, now, there is an excavation into Goblin Town going on that I haven't remembered to go take pictures of, yet, but I need to so that I can do a post on that, and, of course, DRAGONS! Sometimes, especially my daughter, the kids get exasperated with me because they have such a difficult time getting merely mundane answers from me. Sometimes, I almost feel bad about that.Sometimes.I mean, no one has ever just gone to the store or gone outside to play or, even, just gone to the bathroom. He's been abducted by aliens. And, when he comes back, he's been replaced by a robot duplicate or, possibly, a clone. We're never just having chicken for dinner; we're having dinosaur or, depending upon how many times I've been asked that question, one of the children.And I might would feel bad about it except I hear my children, delightedly, repeating those stories to their friends.All of that to say that I loved Neil Gaiman's new book, Fortunately, the Milk, about a father who has to go to the corner store to get milk for his kids' breakfast cereal (because, otherwise, they would have to use orange juice, which is not okay on cereal) and get abducted by aliens on the way home. This was a story after my own heart. It also has dinosaurs.My own stories don't have enough dinosaurs, I don't think.It's an illustrated book but not, really, a picture book. The one I have, the American version, is illustrated by Skottie Young. His art is whimsical and funky and fits well with the tone of the book. That does not stop me from also wanting the UK version of the book, illustrated by Chris Riddell, which is not so funky but looks no less interesting. Not that I will be getting a copy of the UK version, because I don't want to pay the shipping on it.So, yes, the story is whimsical and funky and just a lot of fun, taking off at weird tangents. It has everything you could possibly want from a story like this: aliens, dinosaurs, pirates, time travel... okay, well, it doesn't have cowboys, so I guess it doesn't have everything, but it has an awful lot. If you have young kids (or, even, if you don't), this is a great book to pick up. I'm sure it would make an excellent bedtime reading book. Even though I don't have young kids, I may make mine sit down and listen to it anyway.Maybe, that way they'll know I'm not the only one that does this.

Great book

I got this for my friend's kid but sneaked a quick read before I met him and quite enjoyed all the fun adventures the dad in the story had.

Fortunately, the milk é simples de se ler em inglês, possui um vocabulário e utiliza de tempos verbais bem simples, só que a história tem que ser lida bem calmamente, porque ela dá um grandíssimo nó em nossas cabeças, pós tem viajem no tempo envolvida na história toda.Felizmente, o leite ou Fortunately, the milk é um livro infantil escrito pelo Neil Gaiman (o mesmo escritor de Deuses Americanos, Sandman, etc.). Neil Gaiman é o meu autor favorito, e esse é de longe um dos livros mais simples e surpreendentes do Gaiman (lembre-se, mais simples e surpreendente. Deuses Americanos, Sandman, Coraline, etc, não são simples mas são surpreendente.), e é uma história destinada para o público infantil, mas óbvio que um adulto pode muito bem aproveitá-la. Muito divertido.O livro conta a história de duas crianças que a muito estão esperando o pai que foi comprar leite para eles comerem o cereal, o pai, como já foi citado antes, estava demorando muito, e quando ele finalmente chegou, contou uma mirabolante história de o porquê ele ter se atrasado, e essa história contem piratas, dinossauros, ETs, etc. Esse é um livro muito legal, tanto para ler sozinho quanto para ler para uma criança! Esse livro foi o primeiro que eu li em inglês, por isso eu tenho um carinho maior ainda por ele!

Great book for kids and parents

It all starts when two kids realize there is no milk in the house and can’t have their cereals. Fortunately, their super-amazing dad offers to walk to the store and bring back a bottle of milk. They wait for him for a long long time until he finally comes home. He, obviously, has a great reason to be so late. That’s when the dad tells them his story: he was kidnapped by aliens, and then found himself among pirates, rescued by a talking/time-travelling dinosaur… There are so many things I can’t even remember.It’s hilarious, creative, great both for kids and for adults, and the illustrations are beautiful.