For anyone who's enjoyed driving their kids to distraction with increasingly absurd and surreal tales and/or excuses but, like me, sputter out as you lead the charging elephants against the nombies, who eat chocolate biscuits and who may have been responsible for the disappearance of the chocolate biscuits that were in the press just yesterday, this shaggy dinosaur story about a trip to the shop for milk interrupted by aliens and time-travelling dinosaurs and volcano gods and wumpires and so on is just the thing. The children in the story might not be impressed, and your own kids might not be impressed with your efforts, but here's the perfect common ground of mad surreal silliness told with calm aplomb, very funny and very charming and definitely one to be read aloud.