Original New Orleans Artwork

The Adventures of Boudreaux Bullfrog in the French Quarter of New Orleans

Follow Boudreaux Bullfrog through the French Quarter of New Orleans as he discovers its music, history, food, colorful characters—and a little mischief along the way.

Written and hand-illustrated by Louisiana artist T.R. Bonnette, this charming journey through the Crescent City is a keepsake for adults and children alike.

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The Story of Boudreaux Bullfrog...

Boudreaux Bullfrog came into the world on Royal Street in the French Quarter.

I had painted a picture called Swamp Sprite. If you've never seen a swamp fairy, I can assure you that neither had I until I painted one. A fellow artist suggested it needed a frog sitting beside her on the lily pad. It was a fine idea, but it sounded suspiciously like more work.

When I finally got around to drawing a simple frog in my sketchbook for reference, a lady stopped and bought it. So I drew another, and that one sold just as quickly.

Even a slow-witted street artist will recognize a profitable pattern when it introduces itself twice in the same afternoon. So I named the little fellow Boudreaux Bullfrog and set him loose upon the world.

Since then, through my sketches and paintings, Boudreaux has ridden alligators, played the banjo, the saxophone, and the squeezebox, cooked gumbo, fished from pirogues, and found himself in more Louisiana adventures that would exhaust any frog without a little Cajun in him.

Before long, customers were telling me the same thing over and over:

“He needs a book.”

So I took the summer off to write and illustrate one, and now that book is here!

I chose to handwrite every page—so if you happen upon a misspelled word or an errant comma, I ask only that you extend to the author the same charity you would offer a bewildered bullfrog on his first visit to New Orleans.

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T.R. Bonnette

T. R. (Tom) Bonnette was born and raised in Louisiana out of convenience because the French Creole side of his family had been living there since the 1720s, when Louisiana still belonged to France and mosquitoes were every bit as ambitious as they are today. They simply stayed put while the flags changed overhead.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications and has spent much of his career in the newspaper business. For nearly a decade, he owned and operated a publishing company that produced two publications in Louisiana and another in Tennessee. This book confirms the old suspicion that printers’ ink has a way of remaining on a man’s hands no matter how often he washes them.

Tom is also a Gulf War veteran and has held more jobs than he cares to count, including driving a truck, painting billboards, pouring concrete, working for the U.S. Forest Service, and even killing rats at a feed mill. Many of those occupations weren’t especially related, but each appeared perfectly reasonable so long as there was a paycheck attached to it.

He also plays the banjo and sings, and every now and then someone is kind enough to pay him for it.

Today, he works as a street artist in New Orleans, where he can often be found behind St. Louis Cathedral drawing pictures of Boudreaux Bullfrog.

Like Boudreaux, he lives on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain in St. Tammany Parish with his wife, Cindy, their little dog, Roxie, and—judging by his sketchbooks—an awful lot of frogs.