by James Rice (Illustrator)
Gaston decides to invest his hard-earned savings in an oil well to help solve the energy problem. The locale, terminology, and techniques described are authentic.
Front Jacket
Praise for James Rice's Night Before Christmas series illustrations:
"Forget Dancer, Prancer, Comet, and Vixen. . . . Good Clement, wherever he is, will not be gnashing his teeth." --New York Times Book Review
"Rice is especially good with facial expressions, whether they are on a Texas jackrabbit, a longhorn steer, a dusty cowboy, or the green and long-nosed alligator named Gaston."
--Library Journal
Intrepid Gaston, the green-nosed alligator, one of the most celebrated characters in modern juvenile literature, embarks on a brand-new adventure--drilling an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.
Gaston--whose previous quests have taken him on a Christmas Eve flight with St. Nicholas, to a Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, on a stint as a cowboy on the Texas range, and to a job as a pipeline roughneck--decides to invest his hard-earned savings in an oil well after learning of the oil business's profitability and receiving a tip from a friendly crab.
As in Gaston's previous adventures, the locale, terminology, and techniques described are authentic. Gaston Drills an Offshore Oil Well gives young people a basic introduction to the problems and procedures involved in producing America's oil.
Widely acclaimed as the South's leading illustrator of juvenile books, James Rice is the illustrator and/or author of over sixty titles with almost two million copies in print. Rice was born on a farm in Coleman County, Texas, and currently resides in Hico, Texas. He has taught art at the grammar-school, high-school, and university levels and enjoys talking to schoolchildren across the country about writing and art.
"Rice's pictures are well drawn, each character is an individual. Even his animals have 'personality'--and the pictures are more than funny, they are witty."
--New Orleans Times-Picayune
"James Rice's imagination is clever and his creation of Gaston the alligator . . . brings joy, smiles, laughter and chuckles all year 'round. . . . The author-illustrator captures the fancy and imagination of children and grown-ups, regardless of age."
--Irving Ward-Steinman