< The forecast: Still tasty (and terrifying) in 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

And according to today's weather report, it looks like we can expect cotton candy this morning, with mozzarella blowing in from the northwest this evening. There is a chance of giant pancakes dropping from the sky. Just kidding. It's actually "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs."

JUDI BARRETT: I've always liked cooking, and I've always enjoyed eating.

RASCOE: That's Judi Barrett.

J BARRETT: I taught children's art for 50 years. Went to Pratt Institute, studied advertising design prior to that. That's where I met Ron.

RON BARRETT: Yes. Hi, Ron Barrett. Still putting the pencil to paper, which is what I love to do when I'm not out in the garden wondering why I planted so much kale, which I don't really eat.

J BARRETT: Oh, I could have told you that (laughter).

RASCOE: "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" is one of several children's books Judi and Ron Barrett wrote and illustrated after their divorce, and also their most famous. The 1978 classic is about the citizens of Chewandswallow, where food rains down at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Very convenient, until one day, the weather takes a turn. Judi and Ron Barrett joined us to talk about "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" for our series Picture This.

J BARRETT: I remember the sentence - Henry walked outside and got hit in the head with a meatball. Now, why that came to me, I can't tell you. And that was followed by - I would make lists of weather that worked in with food, like a strawberry traffic jam, pea soup fog. I didn't save the list, unfortunately, 'cause, you know, it was years ago. And you thought, well, who needs all this paper to save? But that was a mistake.

R BARRETT: With "Meatballs," I really wanted to create a world that was so believable that kids would find that a very credible situation and not a real fantasy, but a slice of reality. And I had learned something about using the pen to create volumes - tiny, tiny pens - so tiny. I used over a hundred pen points to create this book. And then, of course, these were the days when you didn't have what's called a four-color process, where you could just do a watercolor and they would photograph it. You would have to make color separations - that is to put overlays of vellum on top of the pen and ink drawing. And each overlay would be a separate color or a tint of the color. So in the case of "Meatballs," there was the baseplate, which was the black-and-white ink drawing, and then there would be an overlay of red and yellow and tints of red and yellow to make orange, or a purply color, in the case of red and a tint of black - a little yellow, a little penful of matzo meal, a little chicken fat, all of that.

J BARRETT: That was very tricky, though, because we were trying to figure out the percentages before we actually saw the proofs come up, and we hid it pretty well.

R BARRETT: Well, I remember in our first book, "Old Macdonald Had An Apartment House," there were carrots coming through the ceiling, but they turned out to be the color of beets - we had beets coming through the ceiling.

J BARRETT: Had to take too much red, yeah.

R BARRETT: But Judi has a wonderful visual sense, so that has made working with her really special, because she will make suggestions about visual ideas and changes.

J BARRETT: When I've read this book to children, over and over again, there are many times that I see something I hadn't seen before because there's so much there. It's hard to take it all in, you know? So I would see something and think, oh, my goodness.

R BARRETT: Well, I have a funny story about being contacted by a mother. And she and her son were reading "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" every night and loved the book. And they began to think of me as Sneaky Barrett. They felt that I would come into their home every night and add more details to every illustration. And they would come back the next day to that page and find all new things. And that was one of my objectives in making this - the illustrations for this book - to add details so that it would be a book that would keep on giving.

J BARRETT: Like hidden surprises.

R BARRETT: Yeah, that kid wearing the Groucho mask.

J BARRETT: (Laughter) In the restaurant?

R BARRETT: And I thought to myself, well, he's wearing a disguise because the food came from the skies.

J BARRETT: There's the mother. The mother looks like your mother.

R BARRETT: No, that head scarf was drawn from you, Judi.

J BARRETT: I know, but doesn't the mother look like your mother?

R BARRETT: My mother had a broken nose. She doesn't look like her at all. My mother fell off a fence and broke her nose. My Uncle Eli is actually grandpa. I left his big, sweet potato nose.

(LAUGHTER)

J BARRETT: You know, that happens to men as they get older. Sometimes it gets all lumpy and red.

R BARRETT: And I became him. Now I look like him.

J BARRETT: I did one thing that was fun with the lamb chops that came down - I think it was at dinner - came down with peas and ketchup because, as a child, I confess that I used to eat my lamb chops - dipping them in ketchup, which, when I tell people, they are truly revolted by it - but that and mint jelly made it for me.

R BARRETT: Mint jelly is great.

J BARRETT: But the thing is, I don't think I thought about what I liked or didn't like. I thought of what worked and what was funny. I mean, I think of it now, and I - it was like an immaculate conception to have come up with that idea. If you come up with one of those in your whole life, it's wonderful. I mean, I don't know what made me think of it, other than the fact that I'm very involved with food, but that I turned it into that was just a wonderful thing. Just - I don't know.

R BARRETT: I think it's been a fantasy of people for a very long time. I look back to the Middle Ages. There's a painting by Bruegel called "Cockaigne." It was the Land of Cockaigne, where pigs walked around with knives stuck in them so you could just cut off a slice of bacon, and wine flowed from trees and food fell into people's mouths from - but we could even go back to Moses wandering in the desert and manna falling from the sky. Judi has tapped into something that is eternal in the human psyche, I think.

J BARRETT: Kids love it. And I think kids can accept a lot of fantasy and a little horror. I mean, it's a little scary.

R BARRETT: I don't see the horror in this at all, but...

J BARRETT: Well, I don't mean horror, but I mean, it's pretty frightening - that street scene where the doughnut's rolling down the street and everybody's running for cover, but it works. It's not so scary that it doesn't get solved. And then there was that nice ending where they left and found a new place. Everything was OK.

R BARRETT: I think the kids like it because the whole world became a mother, feeding them.

J BARRETT: I don't know if I'd see it as - that's a little psychological. I just think that it's a ludicrous fantasy, that food would come down from the sky. It's just - it's amazing - I mean, amazes me when I think about it now. I feel like I've made my mark on the earth, and the book will outlive me, as will the story, which just gives me goosebumps to say that, but it's really true.

R BARRETT: Yeah, I hope my daughters will continue to collect royalties.

(LAUGHTER)

J BARRETT: Oh, dear.

RASCOE: That was Ron and Judi Barrett talking about "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs," first published in 1978. Our series Picture This is produced by Samantha Balaban and edited by Melissa Gray.

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