Fortunately, the Milk, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Skottie Young

Milk is a must when it comes to early morning cereal, making the series of extraordinary events that one Dad goes through to make it to the store and back with milk in hand more than worth it. Shortly after leaving the store, he finds himself scooped up by aliens, who barely have enough time to inform him of their masterful plans before he is swept to another time and place by a time machine. Forget the aliens, being forced to walk the plank is his new concern, but WAIT there's a rope ladder dangling from a hot air balloon to save him from certain death and at the top of the ladder a...monster?! Of course not, it's a stegosaurus. Dr. Steg to you. Floating through sky and time, the unlikely pair encounter Splod, a one-eyed volcano erupting with anger at the loss of his emerald eye. The two avert this catastrophe only to find themselves face-to-face with wumpires, yes with a "w,"and more pesky aliens, globs. 

The illustrations throughout Fortunately, the Milk contribute as much to the intrigue of this fantastical tale as the text as they twist about the page and extends the detail of every description. I can see this being a really fun one to read-aloud and even use as inspiration for kids to write their own loony story explaining why it took them so long to return with the milk. 

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

Nobody would ever want to live in a graveyard, but Nobody, Nobody Owens, in fact did just that. When he fell out of his crib as a babe and crawled his way to the graveyard and away from his house, where his family had recently met a terrible end, most would make the bet that he would soon cross over to the other side as well. But he was received by the cold, yet warm, arms of the souls that inhabited the graveyard and brought up as normally as one can expect to be in a graveyard. 

Without a name, the boy is given the name Nobody, Bod for short, by the leader of the deceased, Silas, a powerful figure that has the ability to move between the living and the dead. Not long after Bod's arrival, Silas deems the Owens as his parents. Around the age of five Bod happens upon a girl, Scarlet, who is visiting the graveyard that had been renamed as a nature preserve. The two are fast friends and fast to find trouble. One day they stumbled upon a grave that is hundreds of years old and in the velvet dark are shocked by the unforgettable words of the indigo man. Scarlet moves away soon after, but the two never forget their adventures or one another. 

As Bod continues to grow, his experiences with the dead, ghouls and dreams mount along with his desire to connect with the living and find the man that had killed his family. At fourteen, Scarlet moves back to the town and enters into Bod's life again, through an odd set of circumstances and a particularly odd historian who spends almost as much time in the graveyard as those who have it as their final resting place. As the duo delves deeper into the events of the past, they find that people are not who they seem and though some try to bury the past, it has a way of coming back to life.