Cloudy with a chance of meatballs
by Judi Barrett
Drawings by Ron Barrett
Ages 6-10
A regular morning breakfast scene. A table. Two kids playing over their breakfast. The mother squeezing some juice. Grandpa flipping fresh pancakes on the stove. And oops! He flips one a little too high and it lands on the boy's head. That could still be a regular, though highly comical scene if you stretch your imagination a bit, but what is totally and utterly fantastic is the story that this episode inspires, long after dinner is cleared away and the night draws high....
...and slowly, slowly along with Grandpa's softly told narrative...
Across an ocean, over lots of huge bumpy mountains, across three hot deserts and a smaller ocean....
...we travel to the tiny town of Chewandswallow!!!
...where, it rains no rain, and snows no snow, and there are no food stores anywhere, because there is no need for it. For all the food that the town needs falls right down from the sky!!
Now imagine the highly engaging possibilities of living in a place where you don't have to cook, and whatever you want to eat comes right from the sky. Whooooosh!!! 3 times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. And whatever the weather served is what the people ate! It rained soup and juice. It snowed mashed potatoes and green peas. And sometimes, the wind blew in storms of hamburgers.
You can expect to sport a big huge smile on your face, as you catch the weather report on TV and it tells you what you can expect for your next meal. And when the people stepped out, they carried knives and forks, and plates and cups, to be prepared for any kind of weather! And where there were no food stores, there were restaurants. Roofless restaurants! Making it easy to grab every bite! :) Of course, this meant the sanitation department of the town had quite a job cleaning up all the leftovers that lined the streets and pavements, and trees. But it was still manageable.
All until one day...when the weather took a turn for the worse!
Pretty soon, spaghetti tied up the whole town and that was such a rocking mess! Another day, all it rained was gorgonzola cheese, and people had to cover their noses with cloth pins, to keep off the smell! And oh...the day of the pea soup fog, when you could not see past anything! And the storm of pancakes, where a big huge pancake covered the whole school and none of the kids could attend! And the ensuing maple syrup flood! Oh the horrors that the Chewandswallow folks had to face!
Soon, it was decided to leave town and quickly. So people glued together giant pieces of stale bread with peanut butter and set sail for a new land. After a week, they reached a small coastal town which they made their home. It took them a while to get used to it....especially the part where they had to pick up their food from the shelves of the stores. Now that was a bit odd! But at least the clouds above their heads were not made of fried eggs! And no one ever got hit by a hamburger again! And nobody ever went back to Chewandswallow to find out what had happened to it. And I don't blame them. Do you? :)
A book for all ages, with vivid pencil illustrations which add a thousand details to the narrative and help you enjoy generous servings of the pea soup and gorgonzola! But be warned and check out this weather update at the peril of being highly entertained , uncontrollably giggle and a very rumbling, grumbling tummy!
[Crossposted at Saffron Tree. For comments, click here.]
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