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A review by xterminal
Pickles to Pittsburgh by Ron Barrett, Judi Barrett
3.0
Judi Barrett, Pickles to Pittsburgh (Atheneum, 1997)
Almost twenty years after the original, there was finally a sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Unsurprisingly, it's not quite as good as the original. Much of the whimsy has disappeared from the concept, though one can't fault the direction the story takes; I'm sure the question popped up every time Judi Barrett took the Meatballs show on the road: “why don't the people of Chewandswallow use all that food to feed the hungry kids in [fill in the blank]?” And that's exactly what we get here; Kate and Henry, our protagonists from the original, find themselves back in Chewandswallow in a dream Kate has. This time, the town has turned its food-based weather into a thriving export industry, sending its bounty around the world to feed the hungry and end drought. Quite civic-minded, and to be honest, a little boring. What saves it from obscurity is Ron Barrett's faithfulness to the artwork of the original; you'd never know nineteen years passed between book A and book B, and the two can be read together without any sort of jarring when you cross between them, thanks to the artwork's similarity. If you've read the first, you'll eventually come to this one, though I doubt you'll be tempted to revisit it as often. ***
Almost twenty years after the original, there was finally a sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Unsurprisingly, it's not quite as good as the original. Much of the whimsy has disappeared from the concept, though one can't fault the direction the story takes; I'm sure the question popped up every time Judi Barrett took the Meatballs show on the road: “why don't the people of Chewandswallow use all that food to feed the hungry kids in [fill in the blank]?” And that's exactly what we get here; Kate and Henry, our protagonists from the original, find themselves back in Chewandswallow in a dream Kate has. This time, the town has turned its food-based weather into a thriving export industry, sending its bounty around the world to feed the hungry and end drought. Quite civic-minded, and to be honest, a little boring. What saves it from obscurity is Ron Barrett's faithfulness to the artwork of the original; you'd never know nineteen years passed between book A and book B, and the two can be read together without any sort of jarring when you cross between them, thanks to the artwork's similarity. If you've read the first, you'll eventually come to this one, though I doubt you'll be tempted to revisit it as often. ***