While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house-and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw-Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and-most serious-civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves-during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement. If you read only one book this year, a story with dancing dwarfs is always a wise choice. “That is where we will have gone.”įrenetic as the story is, it’s hard not to love a novel that borrows equally from Calvin and Hobbes and The Usual Suspects. The father asks a time-traveling stegosaurus where all the dinosaurs went. The best scene in the book is brief and quiet.

But once in a while, readers may wish that the author would stop throwing things. He makes pirates look both dangerous and adorable. Sometimes the book feels like a personal bet between the writer and the illustrator: “But can you draw this?” Young is always up to the challenge, no matter what gets thrown at him. The only trouble is, he’s kidnapped by aliens, and by the end of the book, he’s being threatened by dancing dwarfs. The story is simple: A father goes to the store to buy milk.

The book seems to include every plot on. Publishers used to say, “If you read only one book this year, make it this one.” Gaiman has tried to write the only book anyone will need, ever, packing into it every adventure story written in the past 300 years.

Fortunately the milk by neil gaiman