Just as she is getting ready for bed, a farmer notices that ten of her barnyard animals are preparing for an all-night hoedown. Still wearing her nightgown, she sneaks out to watch them as they dance through the night. As the animals lay down one by one, she counts them off in standard countdown fashion. Ten farm animals dancing in a line, horse got dizzy, then there were nine. Young readers love the rhythm and rhyme in this book, predicting each number as they turn the page to see what animal drops out from the party. John Bianchi's goofy animal characters are as endearing as ever and he manages to work in his usual visual subplots (including a pair of courting chickens who almost stay awake until sunrise).

Frank B. Edwards
Frank studied journalism at Ottawa’s Carleton University and became a magazine editor at the Canadian Geographical Journal (now Canadian Geographic) in 1975. He later moved to Harrowsmith magazine and, in 1981, helped launch Equinox, Canada’s magazine of discovery. Both magazines were named Canada’s magazine of the year during his tenure.

In 1985, he became publisher and editor of Camden House Books, the book publishing division of the two magazines. In 1986, he and John Bianchi started Bungalo Books as a part time enterprise — a vehicle to publish John’s whacky kids picture books.

Frank left Camden House in 1990 to run Bungalo Books full time. He also started his editorial/consulting company, Hedgehog Productions, at the same time.

Over his career, Frank has written about 30 books, a mix of children’s picture books, adolescent novels and non-fiction history, science and biography. He also writes occasional feature length obituaries for the Globe & Mail.

John Bianchi
John Bianchi is an illustrator, cartoonist, artist and a children’s book author. In the late 1970s, he became Harrowsmith magazine’s favourite cartoonist and developed a following across Canada for his illustrated antics of would-be back-to-the-landers (beekeeping, dry walling, wood cutting, etc). He also contributed scientific illustrations to Equinox magazine and a number of renewable energy publications.

In 1986, he created a whacky kids book about a family of bumbling cowboys known as the Bungalo Boys. When he couldn’t find a publisher for his unusual story (the boys rode trees instead of horses and feuded with the Beaver Gang, a band of herbaceous tree rustlers), he joined Frank B. Edwards in the launch of Bungalo Books. Edwards had been his editor at both Harrowsmith and Equinox before moving to the magazines’ book publishing arm.