SLIS 5420- Module 2 - Book Blog - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Pub. Date: April 1982
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Format: Paperback, 32pp
Age Range: 4 to 8
ISBN: 0689707495

Such a cute book that has really stood the test of time. I loved the illustrations throughout this book and really think they add such detail and dimension to the story. Really like the point made through this story that sometimes things might seem like a good idea but it's important to look at as many points of view as possible before deciding you want something to be a certain way. You might not think there would be anything wrong with your food falling from the sky at first, but the book makes it very clear that too much of a good thing is not good.


In the town of Chewandswallow, food falls from the sky morning, noon, and night. The townspeople have no choice about what makes its way to their plates. For a while things are great and the food is delicious, but the weather soon changes and becomes more dangerous; the food becomes less and less appetizing. The sanitation department has a busy job that they soon find they simply cannot do. What will the people of Chewandswallow do?

Reviews:

From Booklist

In the tiny town of Chewandswallow, only food falls from the skies—“it rained soup and juice. It snowed mashed potatoes and green peas. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers.” But one day the weather takes a turn for the worse, and the town is inundated with peanut butter and mayonnaise over brussels sprouts, a thick fog of pea soup, storms of pancakes, 15-inch drifts of cream cheese and jelly, and a tomato tornado. Conditions soon become so bad that life rafts are fashioned from stale bread, and the villagers set sail for a new land where rain and snow fall from the sky, and food is bought in supermarkets. Told as a story within a story (a breakfast of pancakes motivates Grandpa), this wildly inventive tall tale might work better without an extra plot topping the end and without going on quite so long, but the humor is proportionately heightened in straight-faced, closely lined pictures washed in exaggerated colors. Prediction: children dreaming up their own weather menus are sure to follow up on the fun.— Barbara Elleman


Library Uses
I would use this book to demonstrate to students how the illustrations of a book can add to the story and even tell another story at the same time. I would share it with the students by making large copies of some of the illustration and having them tell a story about what's happening in the illustration.