Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I received a book with a missing page....I understand the books are used...but come on, don't sell books with missing pages!

I've been working with this book (with children) for many years and have just bought my fifth copy (as they seem to 'disappear' whenever I loan them to children to take home--I suspect they love them too much to part with them for good!). The idea of reality being what we're used to it being (not rather what it HAS to be everywhere), as well as the hilarity of the situation the people of the story are faced with is just delightful. It is an excellent resource of rich vocabulary and expression, and the drawings are believable and at the same time jaw dropping. Highly recommended to all ages, especially preschool through the lower grades.

I remember when I was in the first grade and having had this story read to us at library time. Everyone in the class loved it and every time when it snowed for the next two winters I looked outside and every once in while I thought I saw mashed potatoes covering the ground. I'm all grown up now and I still love this book, but kids still love it too. We were requested to read this about at least once a month at the day care where I worked.The story is full of imagination and the illustrations, though animated are detailed. The story is a modern tall tale and reading this book is like looking through a giant children's comic book. My favorite section is when the weather food goes beserk and there is a pickle in a living room, a noodle stuck on a man's head, a dog stuck to piece of pizza, and a hamburger stuffed atop a chimney. Stories don't get much more imaginative and creative than that.

When I first read this book I was about seven years old.... and I haven't stopped loving it in the 13 years since. The book is so imaginative and beautifully illustrated. The story holds a child's attention.. a feat that a book rarely accomplishes in the age of television and computer games. It starts on saturday morning... pancake morning. And it ends with a bedtime story that stretches across oceans, desserts, mountains, and into the realm of Chewandswallow, a most extraordinary town. As I child I was fascinated with rain, snow, and thunderstorms. I aboslutely loved them! In Chewandswallow, the weather brings breakfast lunch and dinner. The illustrations are so well drawn and full of detail, there is always something new to see. My favorite drawing is the two page spread in the middle of the book, which depicts the town under destruction of monstrous food... gargantuan pizza, two-story pickles, and doughnuts the size of cars. Everytime I read the story to my cousins, they laugh over the man with the noodle on his head. It is fun for us to think up our own weather-menus for Ralph's Roofless Restaurant, and draw pictures of the food falling from the sky. Kid's love it, it's good clean fun, and the adults don't get bored reading it over and over. In fact, I have it memorized! And I just found out that there is a sequal to this book, Pickles to Pittsburgh, so I am going to have to get it to read... after all these years, I finally get to see what happened back in the town of Chewandswallow... the town everyone was afraid to go back to because of the giant food that fell from the sky.....

This is one book that bridges the generation gap. There are many books in my son's library that elicit a groan in me when he chooses them during our nightly story reading, but "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" certainly isn't one of them. From the absurd tall-tale to the fabulously detailed drawings, each time we read this book we find something new to discuss. Due to the fact that my son is only three and a half, and not able to understand much of the subtle humor of the illustrations, I know this book will have a very long shelf-life at our house as he starts "getting" more and more of the punchlines throughout the years. In the meantime, he is fascinated by the pancake that Grandpa flips onto Henry's head and the giant jello setting in the sky after dinner one night in the delicious land of Chewandswallow.