FOOD - FALLING FROM THE SKY!!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Written by Judi Barrett

llustrated by Ron Barrett

1978, 32 pages

June 29, 1999

By David Wiesner

1992, 32 pages

Here are a couple of our favorite books that fall in the category of 'fantastic food falling from the sky'. Well, maybe that's not such a broad category, but these two books are great for sparking the imagination by taking an ordinary, everyday thing like food, and putting it in an entirely new, and silly, context. And if vegetables are a sore subject in your household, here's a way to have a positive and fun conversation about them. Maybe if broccoli drifted in through the windows, my daughter would be more interested in eating it!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is the story of the tiny, far away town of Chewandswallow, where food falls from the sky three times a day, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Such a great, silly concept will have your kids giggling and imagining what would it really be like to go outside with their plate and catch three, well-balanced meals each day drifting down from above. But, then the weather takes a turn for the worse, and the food combinations get odder and the food itself becomes larger and larger, until one day the town must be abandoned. The people sail across the ocean on giant slices of stale bread (which they then use for temporary shelter), and learn to get their food at...supermarkets! One of the best parts of this book are the illustrations - pen and ink drawings full of little details you'll discover on multiple readings.

June 29, 1999, is another book about food falling from the sky (who would've thought there would be more than one?), in this case, it's just vegetables. But they are beautiful, giant vegetables that float gently down to earth one day (June 29, 1999). "Cucumbers circle Kalamazoo. Lima beans loom over Levittown. Artichokes advance on Anchorage. Parsnips pass by Providence." A young girl believes the falling produce is the result of her science experiment, but there is a much more interesting cause behind the "airborne vegetal event". This is another beautifully illustrated book by David Wiesner, who won the 2007 Caldecott medal for his book "Flotsam".