These World Book Day Costumes Will Melt Your Heart

There’s a lot of things we do weirdly in the U.K.: We add random “u”s and “i”s to perfectly good words, we drive on the wrong side of the road, and, oh yeah, we celebrate World Book Day on completely the wrong day of the year. For some reason, while the U.S. (and everybody else in the world) celebrates on April 23, World Book Day in the U.K. always falls on the first Thursday in March. And it’s also a much bigger deal. (Seriously, you guys should catch on.)

Kids who grew up in the U.K. will all have fond memories of World Book Day at school, when we got to ditch the school uniforms (yeah, there’s another weird difference), and instead dress up as our favorite literary characters. Their parents, on the other hand, may have less fond memories: frantically scrambling the night before to assemble the perfect costume. But this year, U.K. parents have really outdone themselves: Twitter is chock-full of impressive literary get-ups… and some slightly less impressive ones. But hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Here are some of the most adorable little book characters who’ve been showing up in U.K. classrooms this World Book Day.

This next one needs another transatlantic explanation. Argos is a U.K. homeware shop in which you have to buy everything from a catalog. Yeah, it's totally bizarre. Instead of browsing the shelves, you walk in, flip through a catalog, and then ask an employee to bring you the items you've chosen from a warehouse. So with your new knowledge of what the "Argos catalogue" is, enjoy this dad's fast-thinking costume idea...

OK, and the cutest little World Book Day costume of all time?

You're welcome, USA. Happy World Book Day from across the pond!