Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

One of my favorite stories as a girl was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. My mother used to read it to me before I would go to bed. I loved scrutinizing the pictures for every tiny detail of food that fell in the town of Chewandswallow. I hoped that my school would be crushed by a giant pancake. Or that I could go to a restaurant, hold my plate up to the sky and let my dinner fall into my hands. The whole tale was such a wonderfully fantastic story. I also loved the political aspect to it: a town in which no one went hungry. To be honest, I always found the ending a bit unrealistic. I cannot imagine why the sky would go into overdrive and produce too much food, although perhaps this was the authors' subtle warning of global warming and its influence on natural disasters. Such a place as Chewandswallow always existed in my mind as a sort of paradise - but that is probably obvious as I chose to be in a Writing about Food course in college.

As I was discussing this book with my friends, they pointed out the less wonderful aspects of the town of Chewandswallow. Such as, what if you did not like the food that was falling from sky and what about the infrastructure complications when food falls on the roofs? I find that the problems that they had with this children's book are entirely valid, yet I still can't help but love it. What do you all think? Would you like to live in a town like Chewandswallow?