Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

A grandfather reads a bedtime story, chronicling the lives of the citizens of an imaginary town called Chewandswallow, which is characterized by food raining from the sky. The grandchildren are named Henry and his younger sister Kate (though the said girl —unnamed in this book— receives her name in the sequels starting with Pickles to Pittsburgh).

The sky provided the townsfolk with all of their food by raining food, rendering Chewandswallow devoid of malls and food stores. Unlike typical weather, the weather of Chewandswallow always came three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime. The town of Chewandswallow had a sanitation department. It was a food-cleaning service that would clean up food whenever it rained and snowed food. It also fed the fallen food to the dogs, cats, land wildlife, birds, and sealife (including sea turtles and cetaceans). With the town devoid of malls and grocery stores, this was a suitable arrangement for the citizens of Chewandswallow.

Life in the town of Chewandswallow was delicious for the town's residents. But after a couple of millennia had passed and when all the excitement of the food in the weather had died down, the weather took the townspeople a turn for the worst. Then the people began to realize that they weren't happy about it as they thought.

Events such as gorgonzola cheese raining down all day long, and a pea soup fog preventing anyone from being able to see where they were going. The food began to increase in size and started creating natural disasters, such as a hurricane of bread and rolls (which took the workers four days to clean up), followed by a colossal pancake and syrup storm, one of which covered the school (causing it to be closed forever), then one day for lunch fifteen inch drifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches (which the children ate themselves sick and the day ended with a stomach-ache), and then a salt and pepper wind accompanied by a tomato tornado—culminating in apocalypse level food storms.

The Sanitation department service gave up and ceased service operations operations forever (due to the job being too infeasible). Since the sanitation department discontinued service operations, the people were left to suffer the oversized unappetizing food. With no way to stop the weather (and no question about what to do in the Chewandswallow), the town's residents decided to abandon Chewandswallow as a matter of survival. They constructed boats out of stale bread sandwich style (cemented together with peanut butter --with the bread acting like bricks to build brick boats/brick ships) and set sail to find a new home. They eventually found a new town, where they used the bread to make new homes. The residents --now in the new town-- got used to having real rain and snow (as it rained rain and snowed snow instead of food) as well as buying food at shopping malls and supermarkets (instead of getting food from the sky). To get food in the new town, there also was no more sanitation departments. People were working at supermarkets for food-related jobs and not sanitation departments (like in Chewandswallow). As such, the Sanitation Department of Chewandswallow workers got used to working at supermarkets for proper food-related jobs. As for the children, they began school again. And no one ever got hit by a hamburger again nor went back to Chewandswallow to find out what happened to it.

The book ends with the grandchildren waking up to a snowy day. They imagine that the sun rising over a mound of snow are mashed potatoes and a pat of butter.

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 crewed 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 situation 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, 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]