I will admit, when I was a kid I used to dream of going to Chewandswallow. How amazing would it be to live in a place where it rained orange juice and stormed pancakes? Almost every person knows the beloved Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, written by Judi Barrett and drawn by Ron Barrett. But how many people know that there is a sequel? The sequel, entitled Pickles to Pittsburg, was published 19 years after Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was published in 1978, but it still holds the essence of the original. As a child, the original held a place of magic in my mind. As an adult, the sequel provides me with a chance to see just what happened to the place that, in my mind, had simply turned into a garbage dump full of rotting food.


In the sequel, little time has passed in the real world—Henry and Kate are still the same age, and grandpa is still able to go vacationing around the world. In the opening, Henry and Kate are making oversized meatballs for their mother and baking a “welcome home” cake for their grandfather. As Kate falls asleep staring at the postcard her grandfather sent, she drifts away to an island that “from the air…looks like a gigantic feast. Immense vegetables, salads, and desserts lie beneath us. The mountains look like huge loaves of bread.” As they begin to explore this magical land full of food, they realize that the island seems to be abandoned by humans. There are birds nesting in shredded wheat biscuits and raccoons picking out pasta letters from a river of soup. Eventually, however, they begin to notice signs of human inhabitation. Henry and Kate see orange cartons with funnels waiting to be filled, a town in the distance, and then a giant tuna sandwich being airlifted by a helicopter.

When Henry and Kate go to the town, they find that it is an abandoned town called Chewandswallow. Kate remarks that “Somehow, I know I’ve heard that name somewhere before.” (This is the point in the book where I stopped silently wishing “Oh please let it be Chewandswallow, oh please let it be Chewandswallow” and breathed a sigh of relief.) The children encounter workers who are lifting giant potatoes with fork-lifts (they really are giant forks lifting), as well as artichokes, eggplants, and veal cutlets. The children talk to one of the workers who tell them the story of Chewandswallow, essentially recapping what happened in the original book. He then elaborates by telling Henry and Kate that the inhabitants came back years later and found an endless food supply, so they created the Falling Food Company that makes daily shipments of food to every part of the world. In the end, of course the children go back to reality, but the reader is still left in the wonderful dream that Barrett has created.

The illustrations match up perfectly with the original. In the “real world,” the illustrations are black and white, while the “dream world” illustrations are in color (think “The Wizard of Oz”). The illustrations are no longer of the food getting larger and large, but of a world where large food is assumed and people take full advantage of it. I particularly love the milk pool made from melting ice cream cones and ice cream bars. I love seeing the characters I have read about return to me, and that is why having this sequel written and having it drawn by the same illustrator make this book so special to me.

I believe that this picture book is perfect as a read-aloud for all elementary-school children. Younger children can be read the book after they have already read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. I suspect that older students have already ready the original and would be just as eager as I was to find out that there is a sequel. As an independent read, it may be too difficult for younger elementary students, as the text is relatively small and there are multiple sentences on each page. Since the text is so small, the illustrations are definitely what captures the reader’s attention.



In the end, however, I beseech you oh multi-millionaires who control the world, please build a Chewandswallow amusement park. I already have ideas for stale-bread water rides and roller coasters that are forced to avoid flying macaroni and chicken. Call me.