Pennsylvania Dutch Night Before Christmas (The Night Before Christmas Series)
Praise for James Rice's Night Before Christmas series illustrations:  "Forget Dance, 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  This charming parody of the Christmas classic by Clement C. Moore blends Santa Claus with the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch figure of the Belsnickel, a thin, cantankerous old man who visits children before Christmas and rewards, or punishes, them based on their behavior.  This particular old Belsnickel rides in on a plow pulled by cows and steers. The fun begins when Belsnickel's plow and livestock are too much for the farmer's roof and he plunges through the ceiling and into the farmer's bed! After grilling the kiddies to see if they've been bad or "sveet", he gives them their presents and lumbers back through the roof to his plow, promising to send over Stolzfus, the local carpenter.  The distinctive Pennsylvania Dutch dialect and the hilarious antics of crotchety old Belsnickel will make this a Christmas tale your family will enjoy reading aloud again and again.  Pennsylvania Dutch Night Before Christmas is also available on an entertaining audiocassette read by the author.  Chet Williamson is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer who has written for The New Yorker, Esquire, and many other magazines and anthologies. Chet makes his home in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Laurie, and their son, Colin.  Widely acclaimed as the South's leading illustrator of juvenile books, James Rice is the illustrator and/or author of over sixty titles with over 1.6 million copies in print. Rice was born on a farm in Coleman County, Texas, in 1934. He graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Texas, a master of fine arts degree from Stephen F. Austin University, and a master of arts degree in education from Howard Payne College. He taught art and music at both the high-school and college levels and was a favorite speaker at schools, nursing homes, and community centers across the country. Mr. Rice moved to Hico, Texas, in 1980, where he died in 2004.