Cloudy+With+a+Chance+of+Meatballs

=__Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs__= __Written by__: Judi Barrett __Illustrations by__: Ron Barrett




 * Read Aloud:**

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 * Bibliographic** **Data:**
 * **Title:** __Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs__
 * **Author:** Judi Barrett
 * **Illustrator:** Ron Barret
 * **Grade Level**: Ages 9-11
 * **Paperback:** 29 Pages
 * **Publisher**: Atheneum Books for Young Readers Simon &Schuster
 * **Language**: English
 * **ISBN:** 978-0-689-70749-0

The book __Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs__ is an interesting, imaginary story told inside a story. The story begins with a family eating breakfast and a pancake lands on the head of Henry. The grandfather starts to tell the children a story about the town, Chewandswallow. In this town it didn't rain and it didn't snow. Instead, everything they ate came from the sky at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They would get things like eggs for breakfast, hamburgers, and splashes of soda. Whatever fell from the sky that day is what the town had to eat. It sounds like it would be very convenient until everything goes haywire. Towards the end of the story the town of Chewandswallow started to experience some strange things. Bread was falling larger than they had ever seen, there were salt and pepper winds and tomato tornadoes. A giant pancake and a maple syrup flood took over the school forcing them to close down. The town was too dangerous to stay in so everyone sailed on stale bread to evacuate. They created a new town somewhere else and found it odd they had to purchase their food from the grocery store. After grandpa finished telling the story, the two children were convinced they could see butter on the horizon and could smell mashed potatoes. That was probably all in their imagination.
 * Summary:**

I think __Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs__ does a great job expressing creativity and imagination. This would be a great book to use in a lesson when asking students to write about their own town and what it would be like. Since we just experienced a hurricane, this would also be a fun book to read to a class to introduce destruction and what it is like. The author does a great job creating elaborate descriptions and providing pictures of the imaginary town that are in color in order to give a clear visual to the readers. __Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs__ does a great job capturing this imaginary lifestyle in a humorous way.
 * Book Review:**

__Judi Barrett__ was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. New York. She is an author of children's books and has written many including __Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs__. She married artist Ron Barrett who illustrated some of her most popular books. After they divorced, they continued to collaborate on books for many years. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York teaching art to Kindergartners.
 * Author Bio:**

I thought Judi Barret had a very creative writing style. She set up the book to have the grandfather tell a story to the children about this imaginary land which was a very effective technique. The author crafted this element by starting and ending the story with the grandfather and the children. It was also clear when the imaginary story was taking place based on the illustrations When the grandpa and the children were involved the pictures were in black and white, whenever the town Chewandswallow was being described the pictures were very vibrant colors. In the book it also clearly states, "Grandpa told us the best tall-tale bedtime story he'd ever told" and then we are taken back to the children going to bed at the end of the story. The writing style was very unique but easy to understand and follow.
 * Literary Element Analysis:**

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780689707490-0 http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/productreviews/fr/cloudy.htm
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