Book Review - CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett

Ages: 4-8

I can remember sitting with my first grade class, mesmerized by this book as our librarian read it to us (back in the days when elementary school kids when to library once a week). It brought a smile to my face as I read it to my kids, seeing that same mesmerized look on their faces. After we finished I couldn't help but check the copyright date -- 1978. That's the same year my husband was born. That's pretty impressive, but not surprising that more than 30 years later, this book is still relevant (and even a movie).

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a modern tall tale about the town of Chewandswallow. It's like any other town, except rather than getting meals from a grocery store, the residents wait for their food to fall from the sky. Three times a day, they enjoy things like pancake and syrup rains, falling hot dogs and soda, hamburger winds, a Jell-O sunrise. Life in the tiny town was delicious until the weather turns bad and the food gets out of control -- becoming bigger and erratic. Eventually, the food grows so large it forces the people out of Chewandswallow.

If nothing else, this silliness of this book will keep your little librarian intrigued. The idea of food falling from the sky had The Little Lady Librarian giggling with glee. The story is so simply told, yet so full of detail and imagination. The illustrations by Ron Barrett switch from black and white to vibrant colors. Each page is full of teeny, humorous, sometimes ironic details -- like a bird eating an egg, a sanitation truck made of a giant fork, spoon, plate and tupperware-type bowl, or a tomato tornado (especially hilarious to the LLL).

The Little Librarian Dude didn't sit through the entire book. He made it about halfway before moving on to his monster trucks, but occasionally stopped back in to check out the pictures and ask questions, much to the chagrin of his sister who was in no made to wait for him to get all his answers before moving on to the next page.

This is definitely a classic and a must-read for every child. I would just suggest waiting until they're atleast pre-school age for them to really enjoy it.

When we read memorable books such as this, I always love to think up little activities we can do to go along with the book. It always makes it more fun! Here's a few ideas:

-Make extra LARGE food: pancakes, cookies
-Make peanut butter sandwich sailboats
-Keep a weather chart or weather jars
      *Weather chart --- make a weeklong calendar and have your little one draw a picture representing the   weather for each day (sun, cloud, rain, etc.)
      *Weather jars --- using clear cups or canning jars, mark each to represent a type of weather (sunny, rainy, thunderstorms). Then, using little pom poms, buttons or pennies, have your little librarian keep track of the weather over a week or month by dropping a pom pom into each type of weather as it occurs. At the end of the week/month, see which type of weather you experienced most frequently.