Judi Barrett

Frank Schaffer Publications

Inspire your students to love literature with these new Literature Notes titles. From picture books to novels, these colorful additions to our popular series boast some of today's classroom favorites. Each Literature Notes folder is packed with a synopsis of the story, an author biography, and cross-curricular activities for writing, math, social studies, and science. You'll also find creative bulletin board ideas, and delightful art projects.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Life is delicious in the town of Chewandswallow, where it rains soup and juice, snows mashed potatoes, and blows storms of hamburgers--until the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

Sarah Sammis

Back in January I wrote a review of the film version of Cloud with a Chance of Meatballs and I promised a longer review of the book by Judi Barrett. I apologize for the delay. I really don't know where the time as gone!

The book has a framing story that begins with a mishap during breakfast. The grandfather is inspired and tells the children about a place called Chewandswallow where the weather brings food three times a day. Except near the end of the town's existence, the food gets too big and starts to be a threat to the well-being of the townspeople.

As the story is presented as a tall tale, there's no need to explain the mechanics behind the food weather or the sudden increase in the foods' size. Without that framing story I would have found the book annoying.

Although the illustration style of the book is very clearly a product of the late 1970s, the film manages to recreate many of the iconic scenes (though with different circumstances behind them). I liked seeing that connection between book and film even though they are otherwise so very different.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Reviews