Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was one of my favorite books growing up.

The story, in case you're not familiar, is about a little town called Chewandswallow, in which the weather isn't rain or sleet, but food. At mealtimes, people simply stand outside with plates and bowls, and the weather report is more menu than anything else. When weather patterns change, however, the town is plagued with pancakes the size of buildings, and other frightening foods.

As a child, I loved the book for the pictures--pats of butter you could use as a toboggan, spaghetti rain--and I remember a few dinner conversations with my parents where I wanted to know why scientists couldn't work things out so we wouldn't have to go on boring errands to the grocery store anymore.

As an adult, one of the things I love about the book is the unusual nature of the conflict: there's no easy villain to blame, unlike many other, simpler, storybooks I read. It's a case of Man v. Nature, and Nature's going to win. It strikes me as unusual and brave for an author to write a children's picture book where there's no clear good and evil to root for and despise, and to have an ending where the townspeople are forced to evacuate their homes permanently.

And now I'm hungry...