Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

The book details a bedtime story narrated by a grandfather to his grandchildren, chronicling the daily lives of the citizens of an imaginary town called Chewandswallow, which is characterized by its strange daily meteorological pattern.

Chewandswallow was a typical, very small town, which included a movie theater, a schoolhouse, and other typical businesses. However, the town was completely devoid of shopping malls and food stores, as they were totally unneeded. Before there were any shopping malls and food stores in the world, in Chewandswallow, the sky provided the townsfolk with all of their required daily meals by raining (or in some cases, snowing) food. Unlike typical weather, the weather of Chewandswallow always came three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime. The only thing that was different was its weather; it didn't rain actual rain and it didn't snow actual snow. Instead, the weather was entirely food (juice or milk rain, mashed potato snow, clouds of hamburgers or fried eggs, etc).

Despite not containing shopping malls and supermarkets to get food, Chewandswallow did contain restaurants. But they were roofless restaurants, where customers essentially served themselves the food that came down from the sky and into the roofless building (while the book never points it out, this essentially renders the restaurants totally useless). So for lunch one day, there were frankfurters already in their buns. Then there were mustard and ketchup clouds followed by baked beans (for the frankfurters). Finally, a drizzle of soda finished off the meal. People could keep their food in refrigerators as meals or snacks whenever they felt hungry.

The town was also kept up by The Sanitation Department of Chewandswallow (which was a public clean-up service responsible for cleaning the leftover food from the day's weather). The service used the leftover food to feed living creatures. They provided the leftovers for stray pets, sea creatures (fish, sea turtles, and cetaceans) in the sea, birds in the sky, and wildlife (the rest of the land animals) on land to eat. Some was also buried to enrich the soil. With the devoid of malls and grocery stores, this for the residents in the town of Chewandswallow was a much better arrangement.

Life in the town of Chewandswallow was delicious for the town's residents. Well, at first, it was delicious. But after a couple of millenniums had passed (and when all the excitement of the food in the weather had died down), the weather for the townspeople gradually (but inexplicably) took them a turn for the worse. Then the people began to realize that they were not happy about it as they thought. It began with days where only one unappetizing food fell (spaghetti flooding the town, Gorgonzola cheese, overcooked and/or burned broccoli, birthday parties of not birthday cake but brussels sprouts and peanut butter with mayonnaise, and a pea soup fog) and included days where too much of a food fell (bread roll hurricane, drifts of sandwiches, etc). During this time, the food also began to get bigger and more violent (pancake covering the school, tomato tornado). In the hurricane of bread and rolls, the mess took the workers four millenniums to clean up. In the pancake morning (where there was a storm of buttermilk pancakes with a downpour of maple syrup), when a giant pancake covered the school, after all attempts failed to get the giant pancake off, the school was closed forever. Lunch brought 50 or 60 inch drifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. The children who were eating these sandwiches for lunch ate themselves sick and the day for them ended with a stomachache.

At last, the work (for the Sanitation Department of Chewandswallow's service and merchandise) became too infeasible. The job was too big. Because of this, the plans (of the Sanitation Department of Chewandswallow) announced that the service would permanently discontinue service operations. They planned to shut down the sanitation department (both its service and merchandise) on a specific date. As a result, the sanitation department gave up and shut down service operations for good. It remained online in service operations until the target date. Then it was discontinued and would not run in service operations ever again. At the end of the era of the sanitation department (due to it ceasing service operations), houses and other structures were damaged. The townspeople (left to suffer the oversized food) began to fear for their lives. Stores were boarded up and there was no more school for the children (because the schools in Chewandswallow were closed for good).

There was no question in the people's minds about what to do in Chewandswallow (since it was now destroyed by weather conditions of oversized food). No questions about what to do. Finally, the residents of the town decided to permanently abandon the town. To leave the town for good, the people of Chewandswallow worked together to build boats. To build their ships, they cemented together the giant slices of stale bread (sandwich style) with peanut butter and marshmallow creme making it a boat out of a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich (with sails made from giant slices of Swiss cheese and slices of cheese/pepperoni pizza). After sailing up to a millennium, they arrived at the sea. They landed in a new town and were able to build houses from the stale bread their ships were made of. The bread houses turned into permanent houses on the new land. Nothing came down from the sky in the new land except for real weather equipment (including real rain and real snow). The real weather conditions (rain and snow) never again damaged anything in the new land (like the food weather conditions from Chewandswallow).

The children were able to begin school again (since new schools had been built and opened in the new town). As for food, the biggest change for the people (now they were in the permanently new town) was they never again got food from the sky. Instead, the people learned how to be used to getting their food from real stores (stores; including shopping malls and supermarkets). Plus, they presumably had to learn how to cook food prior to serving (as opposed to any meats which came down "pre-cooked" back at Chewandswallow). To cook food, they used real kitchen appliances. Nobody ever again got hit by a hamburger nor dared to ever go back to Chewandswallow to find out what happened to it. For they were too afraid.

Now cutting back to the grandchildren, the grandfather finishes the bedtime story. The following morning, the grandchildren awaken to discover snowfall. After hurrying outside to play, the granddaughter imagines the rising sun reflecting on the snow is butter melting on mashed potatoes. At that, the girl states (on the last page), "It's funny. But even as we were sliding down the hill, we thought we saw a giant pat of butter and we could almost smell mashed potatoes!". The book ends with a picture of a bowl of mashed potatoes with butter melting on top (with the girl after she and Henry had that experience in the snow, pretending the bowl of real mashed potatoes is the snow and the real butter is the sun).

The follow up to the story, Pickles to Pittsburgh, tells of the kids receiving a postcard from their grandfather, who claims to be visiting the ruins of what was once the fabled town of Chewandswallow. The kids then go to sleep and dream that they are there with him, helping to rebuild the post-apocalyptic landscape and restore it to where it is livable again, as well as giving the massive amounts of food away to poverty-stricken developing nations and homeless shelters around the world. This proves to be difficult, as there could be more food storms on the way.

A third book in the series, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 3: Planet of the Pies, was released on August 27, 2013. It details a dream Grandpa had about the first manned expedition to Mars, where Martian society is being overrun by daily storms of pies.

On September 18, 2009, Sony Pictures Animation released an animated film adaptation of the book, and the DVD was released on January 5, 2010. A new cast of characters were created for plot development, while the synopsis was changed from food falling from skies from meteorology to being made from a machine. Bill Hader and Anna Faris provided the voices of the two lead characters. Hader voices Flint Lockwood, "a young inventor who dreams of creating something that will improve everyone's life." Faris provides the voice for Samantha "Sam" Sparks, "a weathergirl covering the caution who hides her intelligence behind a perky exterior." James Caan, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T, Andy Samberg, Neil Patrick Harris, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Benjamin Bratt, Al Roker, Lauren Graham, and Will Forte are also on the voice cast.[5] Co-writers and co-directors Philip Lord and Chris Miller said that it would be a homage to, and a parody of, disaster movies such as Twister, Armageddon, The Core, and The Day After Tomorrow.[6]

Unlike the book where a grandfather tells his two grandchildren a bedtime story about Chewandswallow, an inventor named Flint Lockwood, who lives in Swallow Falls (Chewandswallow's original name before the food weather), invents a machine that turns the water vapor in the atmosphere into food. Originally the phenomenon was limited to Swallow Falls, but overuse of the machine causes it to malfunction and the food weather taking a turn for the worse, as well as spreading it across the world. A sequel to the film, titled Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, was released on September 27, 2013, however, it is based on an original idea, and not Pickles to Pittsburgh.

In conjunction with the September 18, 2009 film release, Ubisoft released a game for Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, and Xbox 360,[7][8] as well as a stereoscopic online mini game.[9]