World Rat Day: Poems About Real Holidays You've Never Heard Of [Hardcover]

From the Children’s Poet Laureate comes a year-round ode to wacky holidays just begging to be celebrated.

Nobody should ever forget Ewe on Ohio Sheep Day (July 14). No mata mata how hard they may try on World Turtle Day (May 23). If you’ve never heard of Dragon Appreciation Day, International Cephalopod Awareness Day, or Yell “Fudge!” at the Cobras in North America Day, it’s not because they don’t exist, it’s simply that they needed someone to spread the word. Luckily, the fantastically zany poems of J. Patrick Lewis and Anna Raff’s equally hilarious illustrations have memorialized these holidays forever. So get out your calendars — from Happy Mew Year for Cats Day to Chocolate-Covered Anything Day, World Rat Day (April 4) calls for a year-round celebration.Raff’s loose washes with ink details exude personality and humor...in this gleefully silly crowd-pleaser.
—Publishers Weekly

Funny from start to finish, these superbly crafted poems and inventive illustrations celebrate the extraordinary, odd, and seldom heard of holidays that the elementary-school crowd will love. Raff’s intelligent artwork adds to the lighthearted play with many surprises...The entire book is such fun that children will will want to shout, “It’s J. Patrick Lewis Day!”
—School Library Journal

Those who annually circle “Cow Appreciation Day” or “Ohio Sheep Day” on their calendars will welcome this literary recognition, but even those who don’t keep “Bulldogs Are Beautiful Day” holy will enjoy the poems as witty nonsense. Highly amusing anthropomorphized creatures rendered in ink lines and washes celebrate on white single- or double-page spreads, and sometimes there are pretty practical curriculum connections, such as “Limerick Day” (May 12) and “International Cephalopod Awareness Day” (October 8). Happy l±