World Rat Day Poems About Real Holidays You've Never Heard Of

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.

J. Patrick Lewis has written more than seventy books for children and is the current Children’s Poet Laureate. He lives in Ohio, where, between author visits at schools, he weeps copious tears that his grandchildren live so far away.

Anna Raff is an award-winning illustrator based in New York City where there are reportedly four rats per human resident. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and American Illustration, among others. World Rat Day is her first book with Candlewick Press.