It doesn’t matter if you love or hate Neil Gaiman (I’m a huge fan myself); if you don’t like dark children’s stories (think Brothers Grimm, Tim Burton, Lemony Snicket), you probably won’t like his picture books. But if you do… you are in for such a treat with The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

The book is about a boy and his very boring—at least, very boring to him—father. The boy’s friend appears one day with two goldfish who seem much more interesting than the bearer of his genetic makeup. The boy attempts to swap his friend for the goldfish, dangling various items around the house for the barter to no avail.

Then the boy gets a grand idea—a brilliant one, as if he’s discovered “electricity or fire or outer space”—and offers his own dear old dad for the trade. Arguing that his dad is as big as 100 goldfish and swims better, he wins his comrade’s acquiescence for the swap.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple; the boy’s mother is furious when she discovers two bug-eyed fish in place of the man she married and demands the boy to reverse the swap. In order to do so, the boy and his sister must enter a serious of exchanges—exchanges that grow darker and more devious—until they are able to retrieve their father, still engrossed in his boring newspaper, whom their friend, after the original swap, traded for an electric guitar.

Dave McKean’s somewhat menacing yet whimsical artwork gives the book a wonderlandish feel—along with Gaiman’s fanciful text and keen storytelling, the presence of a world in which a dad could, indeed, be swapped in a barter feels very real and very much like what many children might wish to do on occasion. The text itself is incorporated in the collage-like artwork, weaving the story and illustrations together in perfect tandem.

Intended for ages four to eight, Two Goldfish is perhaps one of the lightest of Gaiman’s children’s books, perfect for the new reader and more suitable to the younger end of the spectrum than some of his other picture books. It was my daughter’s first introduction to Gaiman and I would recommend it for anyone else wishing to take their children by the hand and step into the author’s vivid world. Of course, you could also always read it yourself… who says that picture books are strictly for kids?