Fortunately, the Milk . . .: Neil Gaiman

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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 Year Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent. My safest places were libraries, manned or unmanned by librarians. My teachers were books. They taught me to look out through other people's eyes, which is the most important thing that anything like that can do. There was something very good about this book. It was an ‘enhanced edition’ which means that the writer reads the book out loud to you while you read it! This writer is a good reader and he didn’t sound at all like the dalek voice that normally comes out of the Kindle. Mum said I could stay on the iPad if I wanted to draw a picture of the writer reading the book. But I can’t draw good faces so I drew a picture of the Kindle talking. Then I labeled it ‘Kindle’ because Mum asked what it was.

Looking for more book activities and resources? You can find the rest of this World Book Day series and more in our teacher resource blogs. I left in a huff and a grumble, mumbling things about prescription lenses and Vampire Weekend being a good band anyway. 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! I wanted chapters of characters and development, I wanted descriptions of far away lands. I wanted Alice Through the Looking Glass with a dash of Phantom Tollbooth.... Update: The fourth grade kids are now Grade 8 students (that is unbelievable enough - they must have opened that door that let in the time-space-continuum!), and they still refer to the time when I read "Fortunately the milk..." aloud to the class. I would say that is the best praise a children's book can get. "Then the milk touches the milk" has become an insider saying! Either the universe will end, or we will be watching the madness of dwarves with flower pots go on for a while still.I think people find refuge everywhere, and I think that people make families as much as they are born into them. And I also think that there is something special and magic, sometimes, about those people who you somehow know you are related to by blood; Robert Frost's definition of home as the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, comes to mind. And, of course, they do. In each of those cases you're looking at people who get to build families or get to be given safe places by families, and, yes, people do often get refuge in the most wonderful, strange and unlikely places. That is the point of this story, the “what if?” Absurdly fun to read for both adults and kids. Don’t miss it.

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." What happens when Mom is away at a conference and Dad is left in charge? Well, of course they run out of milk. Follow along on Dad’s remarkable expedition to retrieve more milk. His adventure is filled with hot air balloons, dinosaurs, aliens, ponies, vampires and a talking volcano??? 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.Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide. Get started Close

In Ocean, you never name the boy-man narrator. Yet the importance of naming is essential to the plot. Why didn't you give him a name? Is he Everyman? (In the same way that Bod is Nobody?) The children and their parents get no names in Fortunately, the Milk, either. Coincidence? 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.He looked like he remembered that, without milk, he couldn’t have his tea. He had his “no tea” face I listened to this on Scribd, with Gaiman doing the narration. It is worth it just to listen to him read it. However after listening to it I went and found the wonderful illustrations. Beth Tabler

No matter how much other characters assist your heroes, ultimately, they must find their own way. This is true in Fortunately, the Milk, when the father must save himself, and it's also true for Bod in The Graveyard Book, for the heroine of Coraline, and for the boy hero of Ocean. Why is that important to you as an author? Eventually we emerged through an archway into the light of day. It was a garden, a very intricate garden with topiary animals and paths of white gravel. Oh no, I thought, an Alice in Wonderland pastiche by a person who has never read the book and only seen the Disney film. But hang on, how did I know that having only seen the film and never read the book? I grew up with a father who tended to invent things and know things and talk about things and could absolutely have gone off into the kind of flight of fancy in Fortunately, the Milk. And my daughter, Maddie, when she read Fortunately, the Milk recently, said that when she got to the end, all she could think was that it sounded exactly like me. So, I think Fortunately is just very, very me. I'm not sure about in Ocean. It's left ambiguous whether the father is actually under the control of Ursula Monkton or not, and it would be worse if he wasn't. This 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. A self-referential gem ... Both author and illustrator are craftsmen at the top of their game, making it look easyGaiman and Young are a wonderful team where the words of Neil make a perfect amalgam to the drawings of Scottie.