Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Barrett, J. (1978). Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Book Summary

This book is a tale with in a tale. A brother and a sister are listening to their grandfather’s tale of the city of Chewandswallow.  While it looked like a regular little town, the city of Chewandswallow was different; food came down from the skies every day, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Instead of just wearing a coat to work, the townspeople would bring bowls, plates, forks and knives with them everyday. Instead of using umbrellas to avoid the rain, they turn them upside down to catch orange juice. Restaurants were made without roofs.  Everything was fantastic, until the food weather changed for the worse. Instead of burgers, it rained broccoli. There was even a tomato tornedo that damaged the town. It got so bad that the townspeople had to leave. They built rafts from food and sailed across the sea, where they then had to learn how to do things like shop at the grocery store and keep food in the refrigerator.

Impressions

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a classic children’s book. I’m sure at one point, many children have wished for it just to rain food, so they wouldn’t have to help mom/dad with dinner and they could get their favorite foods more often (burgers, pizza, etc..). But no one thinks about the consequences of food coming from the sky or not having control of what’s for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Barrett’s illustration style adds a lot of movement, making it really seem like burgers are raining down on the town. The language in the story is excellent for reading outloud. There is lots of alliteration and action verbs, like drizzled, showered, and other weather related terms.

Professional Review

No professional review available for original book.

Library Uses

If you’re in a library where you have a license to screen videos, there’s a film adaptation of this book and a sequel coming out soon. Libraries often show movies that were based on books to then draw the attention to the book.