Dawn R. Deem Stephens

I must say I was suprised when I heard the children’s book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett was being made into a movie. Pleasantly suprised! I read this book to my students every year when I taught school. I had several objectives in reading it. First and foremost, it really got kid’s imaginations to run wild! They loved the idea of food falling form the sky. I typically gave them a writing assignment where they would create a town like “Chewandswallow” where other things besides food made up the weather. I got towns that had animals falling from the sky, and towns where the weather was made up of colored paint, pencils, and crayons. One child, who loved music, even had instruments fall from the sky and the townspeople had a music festival every afternoon. I used this book as a starting point for science lessons on weather, history lessons on the pilgrims fleeing to America, and health lessons on the food pyramid.

But to go along with my blog series for developing Bible lessons within Children’s books, I had to think long and hard about some Biblical perspectives that we could pull into this story. The obvious Bible story that goes with this books is found in Exodus 16 when God provided Moses and the Isrealites “Bread from Heaven” He was very specific, however, in how much food they should collect each day. (vs. 4) If they took too much it would grow worms. And it only lasted for that day. The next day they would need to go collect more. The bread was called Manna and they lived on it for forty years. (vs 35).  In numbers 11, we even read about the people getting tired of eating only manna. They complained and wanted to eat meat. God sent them quail and they ate it, but got sick. One lesson here is that God’s way is so much better for us than our own desires.

The similarities of the Bible story and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is obviously that food is coming form the sky.  But beyond that, the differences are greater. In the true Biblical account, God is in control and sending the food to provide for His people and and teach them about His power and sovereignty. In the ficitonal story by Judi Barrett, we simply have a fun plot of weather going out of control and the people being forced to flee. No reference to God is ever mentioned. With the plot of leaving a town in mind, we can share with our children the story of Lot and his family in Genesis 19:18-29. They had to flee Sodom and Gomorrah before it was destroyed by a volcano.

I hesitiate, however, to do too much comparisons with true Biblical stories to the the tall tale that exists within Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.  Children already are being toldtoomuch by society that the Bible is fictional and the stories could not have happened. So without spending more time in comparison of stories, let’s look at a Biblical principal we can help train our children into thinking through as they read and enjoy this wonderful and imaginative book.

In the story, the people of Chewandswallow had some big concerns and problems. It is always important to have your children think, “What would you do if you lived in Chewandswallow?” -Hopefully their answer would be to pray. It should be obvious to our children that these townspeople couldnt control their weather anymore than we can control ours. However, we know a God who is in complete control of the weather each and everyday.  This might be a great time to share with them Mark 6:49-51. Here, Jesus not only calms the storm but He walks on the water too. Our children need to see that when they are facing tough times and things beyond their control, they have a Heavenly Father in complete control that they can talk with and give requests too.

That probably seems like an easy cop out for a Biblical lesson to draw from this book, but as I thought more andmore about it, I wondered- if we live and walk in the spirit this should be common sense – truly to the point our children ask us when we read this story to them, “Mom, how come the people never prayed?” You see, we treat our everyday weather as someting so mundane and insignificant. We don’t bother to bring God into the mundane stuff unless it gets as serious as a tornado or hurricane and we become really scared.

Ironically, we teach them to pray before every meal and don’t go into too much detail with them how important it is to keep that line of communciation open with God all the time. When is the last time you just “talked about the weather” with God? You know what I mean, the everyday stuff. The small talk stuff. Remember, God provided only enough manna for a day at time. – If you haven’t talked to Him today, you are probably not getting all you need to survive.

For other bible lessons using Children’s Literature:
Children Who Love Jesus may be at risk of catching: A Bad Case of Stripes

Is Your Mama a Llama? Are you the image of God?

The Paper Bag Princess and The Paper Bag Christian

1. Dawn Stephens Books » Blog Archive » Lessons with Peter Rabbit Says:
   October 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

   [...] Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and a Chance to Pray [...]



2. ljurqpcb Says:
   November 2nd, 2009 at 2:05 pm

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3. aiexkvdz Says:
   January 8th, 2010 at 3:21 pm

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