Guilty as charged Your Highness," I confessed. "I thought everyone would like it and think I was clever. But I guess all it has ended up being is a waste of a morning when I have more productive things to do. I could have gone to the bookstore instead. Hang on, that was in the review universe not the real universe. Now things are getting silly." Maybe what I wanted from this story was more development, maybe (like everything with Gaiman) I have this grand idea of what he "should" write, I can't appreciate what he actually writes.

If the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads.” If you don't get it, please do some memory tests, since you have to get it, you just read it less than hour ago!But how could they? Don't they know that I have been a fan of his since the Sandman days, before he was "cool"?' 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.

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." You look down dearie," she said, and I explained my predicament to her. "Well, I know of a place that sells books. I bet they'll have that Neil Armstrong book of yours. It's a cafe down the main street there, and you go left down the lane with the shoe store on the corner and it's halfway along on the left." Neil Gaiman’s latest book, “Fortunately The Milk” is a boisterous tale of an extraordinary adventure, time travel and milk. Gaiman’s is full of surprises, jokes and an awful lot of just being plain silly. If you can’t tell already, I loved this book. This book is an absolute feast for the imagination. You follow Dad on his ludicrous tale as he explains to his children why he took so long fetching milk from the shop. It is brimming with joy and silliness.

About the Author

You've said you wrote Fortunately, the Milk to "redeem" fathers (our word, not yours) after The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. Did you sit down to write a story for fathers? Or did you have the idea for Milk and then think, "Aha! This could be a story to make amends to fathers after Goldfish"? You also play with the idea of parallel worlds in both serious and whimsical ways--two milk containers from different time periods for the father in Fortunately, the Milk; in Coraline, there's the mirror button-eye family and the real family; in Ocean, there's the ancient world that the boy narrator is privy to, and the real world that only his family sees. What attracts you to this interplay between seen and unseen worlds? I returned to the bus-stop which which was covered, unfortunately the covering did not seem to be designed to keep the rain off, rather to concentrate the droplets and deposit them upon the head of a waiting passenger. I was soon joined by another hopeful passenger, an old lady who smelt of wet cardboard and boiled sweets. 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.” A fun recommended read for any and all adventurers and time traveling fans. And as always—a must read for Gaiman fans! I never know where he will take me.

My favourite scene in book was when the Father met the king of Volcanos. Hahaha.... really enjoyed that scene. 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. Twice they get hold of the green stone, coming at it from two different time trips, which prompts the professor to explain his theory: "[A]ccording to my calculations, if the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads." The father replies, "That sounds astonishingly specific." Yet time and again, the professor's theories are borne out. Fortunately, they resolve the dilemma without touching the two green stones (the same one, but from different time periods) together. But will a moment arrive when they are in a similar predicament, perhaps involving the milk? Yes.

I really want to do a musical. I'd really like to be involved, day in, day out, with putting a good stage play together. Just haven't done it yet and really ought to. 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?

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"? Gaiman and Young are a wonderful team where the words of Neil make a perfect amalgam to the drawings of Scottie. I think this is a very good book and it deserves 5 stars, which I have drawn here (because it meant I could stay on the iPad for longer. :) )

Beth Tabler

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. 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. He looked like he remembered that, without milk, he couldn’t have his tea. He had his “no tea” face Oh you did it didn't you? You've gone and bought them. Well you'll not get that Neal's book from here", he scorned.