Book Review: Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman

Title: Fortunately, The Milk

Author: Neil Gaiman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 128

Format: E-book

Published: September, 2013

Price: $5.99 -> Rp77.960 (Amazon)

Rating: 4 / 5 stars

Date started: April 3, 2015 - Date finished: April 3, 2015

Synopsis:

"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."

"Hullo," I said to myself. "That's not something you see every day. And then something odd happened."

Find out just how odd things get in this hilarious New York Timesbestselling story of time travel and breakfast cereal, expertly told by Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young.

Review:

Fortunately, The Milk tells us a story of one family trying to have breakfast in the morning. The children, they boy and the girl wanted to have a bowl of cereals with milk for breakfast but there's a problem, there's no more milk left. The mother was gone for a conference and left their father in charge.

The mother actually had already told the father that they were running out of milk the night before but the father didn't buy a new bottle of milk. Therefore, the following morning his children cannot eat their breakfast and he cannot drink his tea because there's no milk. So, obviously the father went out to buy a bottle of milk at a nearby store.

It took ages, even ages and ages for the father to come back from buying just one bottle of milk. When the father finally got home he told his children that he has been on an adventure across space and time with pirates, piranhas, green aliens, and wumpires with the help of a dinosaur called Professor Steg. The children listened carefully to his dad's adventure when he was buying milk.

"How does a volcano know so much about transtemporal meta-science?" asked one of the pale green aliens.

"Being a geological formation gives you a lot of time to think," said Splod. "Also, I subscribe to a number of learned journals."

After reading The Giving Tree I wanted to read more children's books and when I was scrolling my e-book files I found this book and decided to read it because (1) I've never read any Gaiman book and (2) it's quite short. I finished this book quite fast and thoroughly enjoyed it.

What I like about this story is about how simple it is it basically revolves around a regular activity people do everyday like buying milk. It astounds me that the author could create such a hilarious and fun to read book out of milk. I loved each and every one of the father's adventure, but my favorite one would be his encounter with the green aliens that want to redecorate Earth as they like. It was super funny and I laughed out loud, who wouldn't? I mean the green aliens wanted to redecorate the earth with silly things.

“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 imagination of the author deserves to be applauded. My favorite characters would be the umpires and the green aliens mainly because the umpires talk in a really funny way I just can't imagine them being a scary, bloodthirsty vampires. I like the green aliens because they're basically dumb and gullible, really easy to fool, which was funny to me because we often expects that extraterrestrial life forms outside earth would be way smarter than humans (or at least I thought so).

Overall, a great journey through the mind of Neil Gaiman. Will definitely read more of his books soon, maybe even sooner than later since I need to read a lot of children or young adult's literature for the reading challenge. Wish me luck!! :)

“Spoons are excellent. Sort of like forks, only not as stabby.”

This review is posted for the 13 Days Reading Children and Young Adult's Literature.

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