This is an extraordinary book in both text and pictures. The boy who tells the story is best friends with Slog, whose dad has died after contracting blood poison from his work on the bins. The northern idiom throughout sets the story firmly in Almond's Newcastle, and the boys' close friendship almost comes to an abrupt halt when Slog insists that a man they meet in the park one day is his dad, returned in the spring as promised. He doesn't look anything like Slog's dad according to our narrator, and furthermore, he has legs, and Slog's dad had lost his during his illness. The narrator goes so far as to question the man about things that only Slog's dad would know, and the answers make us think that there may just be something in Slog's determined belief that his dad has come back temporarily. Like Almond's 'Skellig', there is a mystical element to this story that is both warm and hopeful, and we, along with Slog, want it to be true. The other strong and remarkable aspect of this story is the illustration. McKean's work makes this into a graphic novel, and his combination of sketches, comic-style panels, and dark and mysterious figures will take hours of perusal to fully appreciate. Full of angles and tears and dreams, the pictures share the mystical element that is perfect with the text. Not for everyone, but for a more mature child who responds to unusual art work of very high quality, this could be immeasurably helpful.