Poor Red Bug doesn't know anything about the cold wind and snow winter. His friends ask him, "Red Bug, Red Bug, Where will you go? Winter is coming, With cold wind and snow." But the animals who are warning him of the changing season are not keen to let him burrow into their warm winter coats.

Each potential hibernation site (feathers, fur, wool and hair) belongs to a reluctant host who sends the bug away again. Finally, Red Bug finds a perfect spot that bothers no one and the book ends happily with him snoring away in front of a fireplace. (Yes, you guessed it, as snug as a bug in a rug.)

The book's rhyming pattern is a wonderful reading device for developing readers and the bug's search provides a playful look at the way various animal's adapt to the cold. Youngsters love to chant the text with or without the book in hand.

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.