A beloved classic, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is just as entertaining today as it was in my youth. My kids love to see all the different types of food fall from the sky, especially now that they know what they like and don't like to eat. The illustrations are a perfect fit for the story, alternating between colorful imagery when within grandpa's story, and simple black-and-white drawings for the real-time experience. Long live the town of Chewandswallow!

4.5 stars -- I remember this one from Reading Rainbow. This is the surreal classic with fantastic, imaginative illustrations and a crazy storyline. Adults and kids alike will appreciate it.

Oh, I just loved this book. The irony. I think this book hadn’t appealed to me that much because of the meatballs. Even though I like premises that are silly. First, I assumed the story would be all about meatballs but it was actually about all sorts of foods, and the main story is also actually a story within a story, and that worked really well. Also, in the back author bio section, the illustrator’s blurb in my edition says: “Mr. Barrett says his drawing of meatballs in no way endorses their consumption. He’s a vegetarian.” This book was published in 1978, and I became a vegetarian (most of the time-it took me a while to make the transition fully) in early 1977.

The story is funny and creative and entertaining.

The illustrations are wonderful! I love how each picture, the black & white and the color ones, seem to be created using tiny lines. I just love the effect; I don’t know what the style is called though, but I know I appreciate it.

This is a book about which I’ve always been curious so I’m really grateful it’s one of the June selections for the Picture Books group at the Children's Books group. The month’s theme is culinary. So far, this picture books group’s themes and books have all been wonderful!

Now, I’m eager to read the sequel:
Pickles To Pittsburgh: A Sequel To Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

The story is fun and the illustrations are special. To sum it up: incredibly creative, imaginative, funny, really great illustrations, and the illustrator is even a vegetarian. So, it was my kind of book after all.

So many good illustrations but the ones that most tickled my funny bone were Floyd's birthday party scene, a day when the weather provided only brussel spouts and peanut butter with mayonnaise, and the tomato tornado scene.

(Another book that I read and loved in childhood, yet never added to Goodreads. No idea when I read it, just that I've read it many times and all those times were a long time ago.)

3.5

Clever and guaranteed to make a child think, both imaginatively and thoughtfully. Could food really start falling from the sky? A light-hearted read, but there isn't enough here to make a movie. I haven't seen it, and I don't think I want to.

My brother and I have a running joke that I won't watch a movie unless I've read the book first. Seeing just a glimpse of the second Meatballs movie was enough to make me put the book on my to-read list! This was a lot of food-fuelled fun, and its quirkiness and illustrations reminded me of Chris Van Allsburg's early work. It's a pleasurable read for adults too, with a wealth of sight gags and puns like campaign posters for candidates named Anne Chovie and Stew Pot, and inspired moments of creativity, like boats made of peanut butter sandwiches with pizza and cheese slices for sails. I had to laugh at the phallic pickle poking out of an unfortunate woman's house. If anything, this book both celebrates and pillories the truly gross American diet: hamburgers, donuts, pasta, orange juice, eggs, pancakes, pie, hot dogs, soda, peanut butter, meat and three veg, chips, mustard, meatballs, bacon, ice-cream, jam and Jell-O. Yuk. And they wonder why they're so fat?!

We read to our children often when they were little, 20 some years ago. We picked this one up by chance, and I have to say, from the moment we first opened the pages it has stuck with not just me, but them as well.

What a fabulously creative book, one that opened little imaginations wide. Wonderful prose, and illustrations that took that imagination for a ride.

We later watched the movie together as this was *the* favorite book in our house. It was fairly disappointing. Do yourself and your children a favor and read this original book, rather than the movie book, it does not compare.

When I heard this story as a child, I thought it was okay but I was not a big fan. Re-reading this as an adult, I can see why. It's really negative, and the lesson seems to be that the universe will never take care of you

I like it, but I never know why they didn't have any stores, and so the Earth had to supply instead of just using stores.

A grandfather telling his grandkids a story about food falling from the sky. And the amazing and terrifying results of that!

I didn't particularly enjoy the book, but I can see why others do!

The Greatest Literary accomplishment of our time. 6 stars.

This story begins with a family preparing for breakfast, a grandpa is making pancakes for his grandchildren and have a fun time making everything. Later on in that day the grandpa decided to tell his grandchildren a bedtime story about a place that was called Chewandswallow and how it was different from any other town ever. The difference about this town was its weather as it was no typical rain and snow, but the weather would be food. It came around every time when it was time to eat. There was no need for a supermarket as everyone in town had eaten whatever the weather had served. It would serve breakfast in the morning such as orange juice, bacon and eggs and later on would serve something different. The town even had a system of what to do with the leftover food that was not eaten and everything seemed very organized. Eventually the food coming from the sky became bigger and bigger eventually being too dangerous to go outside. The food had been destroying buildings and the towns causing for everyone to leave before it gets to dangerous. From then on they had used some of the food to make boats, sail away from the town and found a town which was just as average as any other town. They had to adjust their lifestyle to getting food in the supermarket. The story then goes back to the grandpa and his grandchildren and how amazed the story was. The next day it had snowed and the children felt as though they can see and smell food.

In my opinion I think that this is a great story especially for children because of the imagination in this book. I remember reading this book when I was younger and how much I really wished it could rain food. This story itself is very unique and brings its own originality especially in its illustration. I think that due to the movie as well it is the reason why this book is so well known to children. I find it kind of silly at the end when the people from that town had to live like everyone else because to me it seems so average. I do not think that there is not one child who does not like this book because it brings so much creativity to the table.