Week 5: Tell me a (Picture) Story

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
by: Judi Barrett
Second Grade

• APA Citation: Barrett, J., & Barrett, R. (1982). Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. New York: Simon & Schuster.

• Description: "The beloved, bestselling tale of edible weather is brought to life!
  
  If food dropped like rain from the sky, wouldn't it be marvelous! Or would it? It could, after all, be messy. And you'd have no choice. What if you didn't like what fell? Or what if too much came? Have you ever thought of what it might be like to be squashed flat by a pancake?"  Retrieved from Amazon.com on October 4, 2017: https://www.amazon.com/Cloudy-Chance-Meatballs-Judi-Barrett/dp/0689707495. 

• Age/Grade Level: 4-8 years old; Preschool-Grade 3

• Justification: I would have students pair up and read this book to one another. It's a longer text, and I think would be more beneficial for students to peruse on their own first rather than a group read aloud. If students are paired up, they can help each other figure out any challenging words first before I would intervene. Reading alone or in pairs would support CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4 and potentially CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.2.4.A if they run across a word that they don't recognize. This book could spark student creativity and imagination and lead into several subsequent projects. For example, students could imagine themselves in a similar situation in which food falls from the sky and draw a comic strip detailing what they would do. They could create an alternate world in which something else falls from the sky and create that world through writing and drawing. They could recall a time when they experienced strange weather and write about the experience, detailing how it made them feel. 

• Keywords: food, humor, weather, imagination

• Review: "A flying pancake at breakfast triggers Grandpa's bedtime story set in the far-off land of Chewanswallow, where the food comes out of the sky and ""whatever the weather served, that was what they ate."" Most of the book consists of nothing more than elaborations on this conceit, with running menu information decked out in weather report terminology, but Judi Barrett's examples are nutty enough so that kids won't tire of the gag--even though Ron Barrett's flippy pop cartoons are too literal to enlarge it. The plot thickens with the maple syrup, and at last the portions grow so large that the people are being bombarded and buried by food--and so they all sail off on peanut-butter sandwiches to a land where food is purchased at the supermarket. A dubious improvement perhaps, but Grandpa's imaginings are very close to a little kid's funny bone--which everyone knows is located somewhere along the intestinal tract." Retrieved from Kirkusreviews.com on October 5, 2017: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/judi-barrett-8/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/

• Citation: (1978, October 18). Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved October 05, 2017, from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/judi-barrett-8/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/. 

Deon, S. (n.d.). Awards. Retrieved October 05, 2017, from http://judibarrett.weebly.com/awards.html. 

• Awards: 1980 Colorado Children's Book Award -- Picture Book (Winner)  1984 Georgia Children's Book Award -- Picture Storybook (Winner) 1990 Delaware Diamonds Award -- Grades K-2 (Winner)