Sometimes books just fall through the gaps in our review schedule, to nestle unread beneath the mire and dust deep in the gutter of our blog's overspill bin.

Well, that's not actually what happened with "Fortunately, The Milk" by genius author Neil Gaiman and equally genius illustrator Chris Riddell (or fantastic artist Skottie Young if you're a US reader!). You see there we were, back in 2013, all geared up to review the very socks off this fantastic book. We waited and waited, we wrote about it lots, full of anticip..........ation and joy.

But the review copy never turned up. Now, I'm not going to have a go at Bloomsbury here as they do send us lovely things to review (though only 'propah' journalists get their middle grade / Harry Potter stuff).

This one really fell through the cracks, and after recently hearing many Twitter folk describing it as a brilliant example of a time travel story for middle graders, I thought I'd just better go and flippin' well buy a copy 6 years late.

So, was it worth the wait? Here's a thing. Sometimes when you've wanted to read something for ages, you can get so over-hyped about a book that when it finally arrives it can't possibly measure up to the hype. Thus was the case with "Fortunately, the Milk" which started out OK, but took a good few re-readings before I finally "got" it.

It's the story of an ordinary family. A mum, a dad, a couple of kids. As is the norm with children's books the mum is a hyper-powered corporate suit-wearing superhero who is nipping off to a conference, leaving the slightly hopeless but well-meaning dad behind to look after the kids.

She leaves behind a long list of chores for the dad - but chief amongst them is to go and get some more milk, after all no one wants to eat cornflakes with tomato ketchup on them do they? (C: I would!)

Unfortunately,  the milk. Yes, as you'd probably have guessed, Dad forgets to buy any but the next morning, before breakfast, he nips out to the corner shop to obtain the revered cow-juice. 

US Cover (and slightly different name) for Neil Gaiman's marvellous "Fortunately, The Milk"

Ooh we're in a pickle. We really don't know which one we like best - but as Neil Gaiman puts it on his blog, he seems to have not one but TWO books coming out in September.

"Fortunately, the Milk" will be arriving stateside on September the 17th with artwork by the utterly brilliant Skottie Young.

Of course the UK does not miss out, we get this...

"Fortunately, The Milk..." with illustrations by Chris Riddell

Either way you're in for a bit of a treat. We've seen the Netgalley versions of the UK edition and Chris's illustrations are utterly wonderful. But we don't like to miss out, we really do want both so we'll have to pull in a few favours from our friends across the pond and try and make it happen.

"Fortunately, the Milk..."will be arriving on UK and Australian shores on - yes you've guessed it - September 17th!

Pick up a pinta or two and mark that date in your calendar. It's going to be awesome.

Coming on September 17th from Bloomsbury Publishing, Neil Gaiman's new children's book "Fortunately, The Milk" is going to be spectacularly huge, take our word for it.

Here, Neil gives you a tasty lactose-tolerant glimpse into what spurred him to write a children's book celebrating dads (hooray) and letting dads take centre stage in a heroic chase across time and space to grab a couple of pints of the fresh white stuff.

We've been lucky enough to see a preview of the UK version (with utterly brilliant illustrations by Chris Riddell, including one or two awesome cameos - not least of all the main character himself who looks a little familiar, shall we say?

We're massive Neil Gaiman fans here at ReadItDaddy (as you can probably tell from our recent reviews of "Crazy Hair" and our constant references to the genius that is "Coraline".

So hearing that the man with the crazy hair (well, he HAS got crazy hair!) is behind a new children's book is exciting news.

"Fortunately, The Milk" written by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Chris Riddell, is coming from Bloomsbury very soon indeed. Weaving a tale of time travel, dinosaurs and...well, a bottle of red top - it's inherently the sort of thing we love Mr Gaiman for.

Don't just take our word for it though, listen to the man himself talking about the book over at Sci Fi magazine SFX's website. 

Neil Gaiman on "Fortunately, The Milk"


(Edit: The cover image previously included in this post was for the US edition, which will be illustrated by Skottie Young - Chris Riddell is illustrating the UK version - kthanks)