Fortunately, the Milk

Fortunately, the Milk (2013)
by Neil Gaiman

There are plenty of times when being a parent is just a little bit shit. Having kids means that you have no money, no spare time, no nice things, no decent sleep and usually no real idea of where you are or what you're meant to be doing.
There are some times, though, when being a parent is kind of cool. Having a legitimate excuse to read a children's book while introducing your child to the joys of fantastically weird fiction - well, that's one of those times. If I didn't have kids, I probably never would have read Fortunately, the Milk, and following on from the soul-destroying masterpiece I'd recently finished reading (A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara), this book was exactly what I needed.

Written by the incomparable Neil Gaiman (Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Ocean at the End of the Lane - if you're not already familiar with Neil Gaiman, I suggest you pop into your local library immediately) and delightfully illustrated by Chris Riddell, Fortunately, the Milk is the story of a dad who pops out to buy milk. Returning home with the milk after an unexpectedly long delay, Dad is asked what took him so long. What follows is a fantastical tale of adventure, suspense and inter-dimensional time travel with Dad striving to protect the milk and bring it home to his children.

"Dad" and Neil Gaiman himself - not dissimilar in appearance...

Fortunately, the Milk includes everything a kid could possibly want in a book. And I really do mean everything. There are aliens, pirates, time-travelling dinosaurs, explosions, hot air balloons, a volcano god, vampires and sparkly ponies, to name just a few. There is not a single boring sentence to be found.
All of which makes this a great choice for reading to kids because it's charming and interesting and funny for adults, too. It also means that kids love it. My son is six, so still relatively new to this whole reading thing (and possibly a little younger than the target audience) and this book was an absolute revelation for him. I have never seen him quite so captivated by a book - any book that can make a six-year-old ignore video games has got to be a winner.

We bought the electronic version of Fortunately, the Milk for 99c on Amazon. Bargain! It looks like it's gone back up to $4 now, but this is still a pretty small price to pay for absolute brilliance. The version we bought also includes embedded video of Neil Gaiman introducing the book and discussing parts of the story - unfortunately my Kindle is not fancy enough to do this, so instead we just got a sad-looking "Your device does not support video playback" message. If you have a slightly fancier device, however, I'm sure that this would add to the whole experience.

I don't know why this photo insists on turning itself sideways, but you get the idea...

There are plenty of people despairing about kids spending too much time staring at screens and not enough time reading. The best way to get kids reading? Give them something fantastic to read (and stop trying to ban books, of course)!
Reading should be fun. If books were more fun than TV and Minecraft, kids would probably choose to read a lot more often and books like Fortunately, the Milk are doing a great job of making reading WAY more fun than anything on TV.

If you happen to know any children, buy this book and read it to them. If you don't know any kids, just buy it for yourself - who wouldn't enjoy a story about a time-travelling Stegosaurus?

The time-travelling dinosaur in question, accompanied by Dad and a carton of milk.

9/10 (if the video playback had worked, it totally would've been a 10)