Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Title: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Author: Judi Barrett
Genre: Modern Fantasy

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is the fantastical story told by a grandfather to his two grandchildren. The story told of a small town called Chewandswallow whose weather is actually downpours of food. Though it is a welcome occurrence to begin with, the situation soon spirals out of control as large flapjacks envelope schools and unsavory foods begin to take over the skies. Fearing for the worst, the townspeople soon decide to abandon the town. They lash together boats with large pieces of stale toast and peanut butter, and sail the soupy seas to a coastal town. They build temporary houses out of the bread they used for boats, and are shocked to find that in this new place, people buy their groceries at a store rather than receiving them from the skies. The grandfather ends his tale as the children settle down for bed. As the children wake up the next morning to a beautiful snow, they cant help but think that the snow on the hill that they sledded on smelled like mashed potatoes, and the sun rising atop the hill looked strangely like a large pat of butter.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs shows how the inhabitants of Chewandswallow had to think on their feet to problem solve how to get out of town before they were engulfed by the oncoming downpours of disgusting food. After reading Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, students could discuss and reflect in writing about a situation in which they had to use ingenuity to problem solve out of a particularly tricky situation.