If you mention the name Neil Gaiman in certain circles (namely literary, nerdish, Whovian and the like) you are likely to get a lot of high pitched squeals 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.

“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 story of time travel and breakfast cereal, expertly told by Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young.

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 enjoyed. 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!

What are you and your kids reading right now?