When I was growing up in the early 80’s, one of my favorite gifts was `a book called "A Cajun Night Before Christmas" by James Rice. If I recall correctly, the story starred an alligator named Gaston which was our version of Rudolph. The book was written in ol’ Cajun dialect "Twas dey night befo’ Christmas an’ all tru dey house.." and it was a bit hard to read but I still loved it. I loved the book so much, in fact, that I begged my mom to get the rest of the Gaston series. A few of the titles included

 

Gaston the Green-Nosed Alligator	Gaston Drills and Oil Well	The Cajun Alphabet
Gaston Goes to Mardi Gras	Gaston Lays an Offshore Pipeline	Gaston Goes to Texas

If you’d like to give your children the gift of Gaston, you can buy James Rice’s books at Pelican Publishing Online or Amazon.com!