Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Written by Judi Barrett

Illustrated by Ron Barrett

Published in 1978

Grade Level: 3rd grade

Synopsis: The book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs begins in the morning around the breakfast table.  Some chaos occurs when pancakes accidentally go flying across the room.  Inspired by the events at the breakfast table, Grandpa tells his grandchildren the "best tall-tale bedtime story he'd ever told."  He tells them a story about a town called Chewandswallow.  In this town, food and beverages come from the sky.  Sometimes a pea soup fog covered the town and other times it rained tomato soup while toast fell from the sky.  The people had all they could ever want until one day the weather took a turn for the worse.  The sky began dropping too much food.  There was no where to put the extra food and homes were being destroyed by the large falling foods.  The people of Chewandswallow could not stay there any longer, so they built rafts out of stale bread and peanut butter and set sail for a new land.  After hearing the bedtime story the children go to sleep and wake in the morning to find that the sun looks like a pat of butter atop a mountain of mashed potatoes, which is actually a snow-covered hill. 

Theme/Skill: The contents of this story could be used as a supplementary text for a weather unit in which the teacher could introduce students to the various forms of precipitation.  Connecting literature to science is a useful teaching strategy. 

Pre-reading activity: Introduce the term precipitation.  It may seem obvious that students will be able to speak about common weather patterns, yet they may not know that the rain and snow that they see fall from the sky is called precipitation.  Show the students images of various types of precipitation and then have them work with the child next to them to come up with what they think precipitation is.  The teacher will ask students to share their definitions and together, with guidance from the teacher, the students will form a refined definition for the new word, which generally means any form of water that falls to the earth from the atmosphere.

Post-reading activity: Allow students the chance to identify what they thought about the story.  Have them identify what items fell from the sky in Chewandswallow.  This should lead into instruction precipitation.  Introduce the terms freezing rain, sleet, and hail to students.  Have stations set up in which students will travel in groups from station to station and learn about precipitation by reading age appropriate articles (perhaps from Time for Kids or children's books about weather).  Other stations will include tools for measuring precipitation, while other stations will give information about the amount of precipitation that falls in different parts of the country and the world.  Students will work together to find the information they need and find the answers to the questions in their weather packets. 

Assessment: Students will be graded on their ability to work with their classmates in small groups.  Students will assess their own behavior and participation in the group as well as complete a group assessment at the end of the activity. 

Reflection: Judi and Ron Barrett have created an imaginative story about a unique land where food falls from the sky.  The story could stand alone as could the illustrations, but together they create a world of imagination and creativity.  The story is entertaining and the illustrations bring the words to life.  I don't think that children will be the only readers to fall in love with the story.  Children will be engaged by its silliness and unique page setup, while adults are sure to enjoy the subtle humor.