It's possible to make out individual bricks in the chimneys. The light posts in town have campaign posters stuck on them. You can see bags and hats for sale in the window of Kathy's Gift Shop - next door a barber is cutting hair. Even though the story is a fantasy - 'a ludicrous fantasy,' says Judi - the town and its people are fully realized. 'I really wanted to create a world that was so believable that kids would find it a very credible situation,' he says. He says he using 'tiny, tiny' nibs to create all the fine details and lines. Ron Barrett illustrated Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs in pen and ink. We were trying to figure out the other day how we got the drawings from him to me and me back to him.' 'You know, we send things back and forth. 'We play ping pong on the Internet,' says Judi. 'The very best of friends,' says Ron Barrett. The pair say they remained very friendly after their divorce. They created Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs after their separation. The Barretts met at the Pratt Institute in the 1960s - their first books together were Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House and Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing. 'I don't know what made me think of it other than the fact that I'm very involved with food,' Barrett says.Ĭloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is one of several children's books Barrett wrote that were illustrated by her ex-husband, Ron Barrett.

Sony Pictures Animation even turned the children's book into a movie in 2009. Hotdogs, already in their buns, blew in from the northeast.įood falling from the sky! It's every kid's fantasy - and since its publication in 1978, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has sold millions of copies. In Chewandswallow, it rained soup and juice. Everything that everyone ate came from the sky.' In Judi Barrett's classic children's book, the town of Chewandswallow was just like any other town - except for the weather: 'It came three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It's raining meatballs book