sloths in creative quarterly 31

With all of my focus on rats these days, I was thrilled to learn that my sloths image from World Rat Day snuck into the spring Creative Quarterly competition as a runner-up. Of course, if you look closely, you’ll see the rat squad is in there too. 

The Release of the Rats!

Today’s the day World Rat Day, by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by me, storms bookstores and mailboxes. Here are a couple of reviews...

“Funny from start to finish, these superbly crafted poems and inventive illustrations celebrate...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 

“J. Patrick Lewis gives...ear food for elementary school kids accompanied
by charming illustrations by Anna Raff!” —Bobbi Katz

:^)

Signing at Rizzoli Bookstore, NYC - April 13th, 3pm

Happy [belated] National Pig Day! I hope you found a proper way to honor the swine this past Friday.

The release of World Rat Day is a little over a week away, and it has been getting some nice attention in print and cyberspace. But first things first...

On Saturday, April 13th from 3:00–4:30 PM, the Rizzoli Bookstore in midtown Manhattan is hosting a book signing for me. Here’s the announcement from their website:

To help celebrate National Poetry Month, award-winning illustrator Anna Raff joins us for this kid-friendly event in which she unveils a whimsical collection of poems and her illustrations commemorating such quirky holidays as Dragon Appreciation Day and International Cephalopod Awareness Day.

I know you’ll want to fill me in on how you celebrated the actual World Rat Day which is a few days earlier, so I look forward to seeing you there! For directions, click here.

In other World Rat Day news, the rats got a nice, visual shout out in the “Spring Children’s Books” issue of Publisher’s Weekly last week. To read the complete PW review, click here. And the book trailer has been featured on several illustration sites. If you still haven’t watched it, take a short 1-minute, 36-second break. I hope it puts a smile on your face.