Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Oh yea. This book had to make it to the blogs, it's such a classic. First off, I don't know any book that could define Fiction any better. Judi and Ron Barret pair up to make this insane little town of chewandswallow, which is seemingly wonderful with food falling from the sky at every meal, however like an over-kill of any kind of resource, it eventually becomes a mess, and a start over is quite necessary. I think of our Federal spending and how too much of it made a big mess of our country as well :) . This is definitely a leisurely, favorite bed time type of story that eventually became a movie due to it's overwhelming popularity.

I do think there are teachable moments that come from the story, like how with fictitious stories we can add lots of elaboration and embellishments to make our stories more rich and exciting. I also think theres a subliminal message of resources and the notion of too much of anything is never a good thing. I think as a pre-activity I would ask the students what they thought this story would be about, and then after reading it I would allow them to recreate the story, but making it better and with a different solution. For example, in the story the townspeople simply move away and build bread houses. Why couldn't they have created giant barrels to catch each kind of food, and ship out what they didn't need to people who were starving? I would turn the book into a more critical thinking piece, and maybe touch on some elements of health as raining hot dogs ( or in my case, not dogs) may seem fantastic, but what is a healthier food that could be raining from the sky? Food for thought :p