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• The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes Basic Books (New York, NY), 2009
• Do Not Lick This Book*: *It's Full of Germs Roaring Brook Press (New York, NY), 2018

1. Do not lick this book* : *it's full of germs LCCN 2017957291 Type of material Book Personal name Ben-Barak, Idan, author. Main title Do not lick this book* : *it's full of germs / Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost ; scanning electron microscope images by Linnea Rundgren. Edition First American edition. Published/Produced New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2018. ©2017 Description 32 unnumbered pages : color illustrations ; 23 cm ISBN 9781250175366 (hardcover) 1250175364 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER QR57 .B45 2018 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. The invisible kingdom : from the tips of our fingers to the tops of our trash, inside the curious world of microbes LCCN 2009019655 Type of material Book Personal name Ben-Barak, Idan. Main title The invisible kingdom : from the tips of our fingers to the tops of our trash, inside the curious world of microbes / Idan Ben-Barak. Published/Created New York : Basic Books, 2009. Description x, 204 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN 9780465018871 (alk. paper) : 0465018874 (alk. paper) CALL NUMBER QR56 .B38 2009 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER QR56 .B38 2009 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• We Go Way Back: A Book About Life on Earth and How it All Began (Idan Ben-Barak (Author), Philip Bunting (Illustrator)) - 2023 Roaring Brook Press , New York, NY
• The Very Hard Book (illustrated by Philip Bunting) - 2022 Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia
• Argh! There's a Skeleton Inside You! (Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost (Author)) - 2019 Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia
• Why Aren't We Dead Yet?: The Curious Person’s Guide to the Immune System - 2018 Scribe, New York, NY
• Small Wonders: How Microbes Rule Our World - 2009 Scribe, New York, NY

• Idan Ben-Barak website - http://www.idanbb.com/

  I write science books, usually for children; they’ve been translated into nearly twenty languages and won a couple of awards. I live in Melbourne, Australia with my wife and our two boys. Sometimes, after they go to bed, I play my guitar a bit.

  I have degrees in microbiology and in the history and philosophy of science, a diploma in library studies, and a day job that has very little to do with any of the above.

  If you want to contact me, email is probably best. You can also find me on Facebook (too often for my own good), Instagram (occasionally) and Twitter (rarely). When I have anything to say about writing I say it on my blog

• From Publisher -

  Idan Ben-Barak has written several books so far, including Do Not Lick This Book and Small Wonders: How Microbes Rule Our World; they’ve been translated into over a dozen languages and won a couple of awards. He lives in a smallish apartment in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and their two boys. Sometimes, after they go to bed, he grabs the guitar and makes up harmless little tunes. He has degrees in microbiology and in the history and philosophy of science, a diploma in library studies, and a day job that has very little to do with any of the above. You can find Idan on Facebook (too often for his own good), Instagram (occasionally) and Twitter (rarely). When he has anything to say about writing he says it on his blog.

  Idan Ben-Barak holds a BSc in medical science and an MSc in microbiology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a PhD in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, and a library diploma. His first book, Small Wonders: how microbes rule our world was published by Scribe and translated into five languages. It won the 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru SB&F (Science Books and Films) Prize for Excellence in Science Books, Young Adult category. He is the author of Do Not Lick This Book (Roaring Brook, June 2018), illustrated by the creator of the YouTube sensation Dumb Ways to Die.

• NORTH MELBOURNE BOOKS - https://northmelbournebooks.weebly.com/author-interviews/north-melbourne-books-talks-to-idan-ben-barak-and-julian-frost-september-2019

  NORTH MELBOURNE BOOKS TALKS TO IDAN BEN-BARAK AND JULIAN FROST - SEPTEMBER 2019
  1/9/2019

  Picture

  Idan Ben-Barak Julian Frost (photo: Matt Bates)
  ​
  North Melbourne Books: Quog and Oort are on their way to Kevin's party, but the engine has fallen off their spaceship. They need to open the spaceship door and retrieve the engine. Oort is a gas cloud and has no hands. Quog is a blob and she doesn't have hands either. How to open the door? Quog decides to grow some hands, but finds it not as simple as that. She needs to learn a few things first.

  The round, bouncy illustrations are a lot of fun and the spaceship is especially cute. It looks like a tumble dryer! How did you come up with the idea for the story?

  Idan Ben-Barak: Julian did! This book is largely his brainchild. I helped. The relationship between us in making the book turned out, quite coincidentally, to be reflected in the relationship between the two main characters: one does all the heavy lifting and undergoes significant changes, and the other kinda floats around in the background much of the time.

  Julian Frost: The way we make books isn't so much coming up with ideas, as remembering the ideas that blew our tiny minds when we first understood them. We're just trying to give that experience to others. Then we just add silly jokes and aliens, and there you go. (Compulsively adding silly jokes to everything turns out not to be an advantage in many areas of adult life, so it's lucky they let us make kids' books.)

  North Melbourne Books: Argh! There's a skeleton inside you! is very interactive and science based, despite the main characters being an animated blob and a gas cloud. The reader has to perform various actions and learn about all the different components of the hand, such as bones, muscle and nerves. Did you have to do much scientific research, or were you already an expert?

  Idan Ben-Barak: The essential concepts are fairly fundamental, and I was comfortable with them. I did spend a few hours making sure we got the facts right, especially in the final spread where we go into some detail about the body's systems, but (again) most of the work was Julian studying anatomical images to make his illustrations as accurate as possible.

  Julian Frost: Idan and I both have hands, and we haven't forgotten that amazing feeling of realising that your body is packed tight with miracles, so we're pretty much experts! But we did look in some books too to make sure we drew the right bits in the right places.

  North Melbourne Books: How do you both collaborate as a team? As the illustrator, does Julian get much input into how the story is written? And as the writer, does Idan get to choose colours or make suggestions?

  Idan Ben-Barak: I can definitely suggest things. Our process for the two books we've written is very iterative - lots of conversation going back and forth between us. The first draft I write includes a lot of visual detail: picture books are primarily a visual format, the text is secondary and I try to have as little of it as possible. Then Julian takes over and reworks the entire thing, invariably for the better. I expect I'm allowed to suggest colours etc., but why would I? I don't value my own judgement in this field very highly, and he is demonstrably an expert in it. I stay out of his way as much as possible.

  One area where I do sometimes ask for amendments is when the science of it isn't quite right in the story. When that happens we need to think about it, and ultimately come up with a solution that serves both narrative and fact. It's not always easy...

  Julian Frost: Ignore whatever Idan says. We do everything together. Here's a picture of us writing the story:
  Picture
  And here's one of us drawing the pictures:
  Picture
  (Idan is left-handed.)

  And here are the trousers we get into every morning:
  Picture
  North Melbourne Books: We learn that Quog is a girl blob, but what about Oort? Is it genderless, or non-binary or simply a floating gas?

  Idan Ben-Barak: Don't go there, man. Trust me.

  Julian Frost: Oort is actually a flock of microscopic pink space chickens. We all know that individual space chickens are dumb, but few people realise that when flying in formation their collective intelligence is sufficient to speak short sentences and see with x-ray vision.

  North Melbourne Books: What books are you enjoying reading at the moment?

  Idan Ben-Barak: I have about ten books on the go at any one time; some take me years to get through. the most recent ones I've finished are The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Under Milk Wood. Next up is The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands.

  Julian Frost: Red Mars, and The Unwomanly Face of War

  Argh! There's a Skeleton Inside You! by Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost. Published by Allen & Unwin. $19.99

• Science Book a Day - https://sciencebookaday.com/2014/09/26/science-book-a-day-interviews-idan-ben-barak/

  Science Book a Day Interviews Idan Ben-Barak
  POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 26, 2014
  idan-ben-barak

  Special thanks to Idan Ben-Barak for answering 5 questions about his recently featured book – Why Aren’t We Dead Yet?: The Survivor’s Guide to the Immune System

  Idan Ben-Barak holds a BSc in medical science and an MSc in microbiology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is currently completing a PhD in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney. His first book, Small Wonders: how microbes rule our world was published by Scribe and translated into five languages. It won the 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru SB&F (Science Books and Films) Prize for Excellence in Science Books, Young Adult category. Idan’s new book is Why Aren’t We Dead Yet? the survivor’s guide to the immune system, published by Scribe. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and two children. – From Scribe Publishers

  Author’s Homepage/Blog: http://idanbb.wordpress.com

  #1 – What was the impetus for Why Aren’t We Dead Yet?

  The immune system was always something of an enigma for me – where is it? What is it? Why is it? It’s a very diffuse sort of system. From what I was reading in newspapers and advertisements, everyone else was just as confused as I was. I thought I’d try to put a stop to that confusion, and have a proper look at immunity.

  #2 – What do we know about the immune system? How has this knowledge developed from say about 20 years ago?

  That question deserves a book-length answer. The very, very short version of it would be that during the past 20 years, researchers have been growing increasingly aware of the connections between the immune system and other elements of the body and the environment. the relationship of the immune system with the brain, for instance, or with the microbes that live in and on us. It’s a lot more interesting than we used to think. The role and function of the innate immune system is also something that’s been receiving closer attention starting in the 1990s.

  #3 – You try to inject humour into your book. Is this a philosophy you have when communicating science?

  I don’t try to inject humour into my books! I just don’t bother deleting it. Humour is interweaved into our thinking, our conversations, and our lives. You’ll hear people laughing at any business meeting, pub conversation or family dinner table. Science is no different (lab conversations are a hoot).I expect that amusing things occur to any science writer while they write. The only difference is that I don’t actively remove these things if I think they add to the story I’m telling. These are choices that every writer makes for themselves.

  I don’t set out to write something funny. I’m not a comedian or a humourist, whose primary goal is to make people laugh. Humour is incidental to my writing, but for me it’s a useful tool that I employ when appropriate.

  #4 – How have people responded to the facts and information you provide in your book?

  They haven’t yet…The book’s only been out for a couple of weeks, so even my dad has yet to finish it. The general vibes I’m getting are pretty positive so far.
  I’ve done a couple of radio interviews, and many of the questions I’m asked at these have much to do with health issues – specifically the Ebola outbreak that’s been making the headlines recently, and how dangerous I think it is globally, and so forth. I have to keep saying what I said on the first page of the book: that it’s not a health advice book and doesn’t contain any revolutionary new ‘secrets’ to boost your immunity. Sorry.

  #5 – Are you working on any new projects/books you can tell us about?

  I’m revving up a maths book, to be co-written with a mathematician friend. I don’t know anything about maths and I’m pretty crap at solving equations and stuff, so I’m frankly quite scared of it all, but he’s promised there’s no exam at the end. It’s going to be an interesting experience.

• Australian Jewish News - https://www.australianjewishnews.com/taking-science-to-the-child-masses/

  Taking science to the child masses
  The wonderful thing about Idan Ben-Barak's books is that they incorporate his love of science.
  By JESSICA ABELSOHN
  December 12, 2022, 12:00 pm
  Idan Ben-Barak with his latest book.
  Idan Ben-Barak with his latest book.
  With a degree in microbiology and the history and philosophy of science, a diploma in library studies, and a day job that has very little to do with any of the above, writing books – let alone children’s books – wasn’t something Idan Ben-Barak ever thought he would do. But the universe had other plans.

  The wonderful thing about Ben-Barak’s books though is that they incorporate his love of science.

  “I had no clue whatsoever that I’d end up doing this,” he told The AJN.

  “I enjoyed making up occasional funny little bits for school papers and whatnot, but it was very clear to me that real writing was done by special people who could make up 70,000-word-length narratives out of thin air. Then, aged 30, I stumbled into a writing workshop and serious-sounding people started telling me to hand things in. I’m very obedient, so I handed the things in. It’s been like that ever since.”

  While his first two books were for adults, a publisher changed Ben-Barak’s tune, with a request for a children’s book about microbes, called Do Not Lick This Book.

  The author acknowledges that he has a particular affinity for writing for kids.

  “I think it’s the limitations of the medium. You have a limited number of pages and a limited vocabulary to get the reader engaged, and child readers do not tolerate boredom, vagueness or waffling. They will just leave,” he said. “And very importantly, being very silly is still allowed in children’s books.”

  Ben-Barak still has a day job so, as he explained, writing is confined to whatever time he can find. But he says it’s not a formal process.

  “I scribble what I can, then I get up and go look in the fridge, and when I come back I look at what I’ve written and it’s still rubbish – only somehow even worse than it was two minutes ago – and I sit down again and write another sentence, and delete it, and the one before it for good measure!” he said.

  When asked what advice he would give to aspiring writers, Ben-Barak – in true Israeli fashion – said there’s no such thing as an aspiring writer.

  “Either you’re putting words on a page in your chosen order, in which case you’re a writer, or you’re not, in which case you’re not a writer.

  “Being paid or unpaid, published or unpublished has nothing to do with it,” he said.

  “If you have a goal in mind, such as being a published author, winning an award, or making writing your full-time occupation, I’d advise you to leave that aside for a while and concentrate on finishing a draft of that idea that’s been nagging at you for a while now.”

Why Aren't We Dead Yet?: The Survivor's Guide to the Immune System

by Idan Ben-Barak

Scribe, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 204, ISBN 9781922247667

Spectator Bookshop, 11.69 [pounds sterling]

Before I read this book, I imagined the immune system as a defensive force, like the Germans on the beaches at Normandy on June 6 1944. When you're young and vital, your immune system is the Germans in the early morning--scanning the horizon for movement, with plenty of ammunition in reserve. But life is a process of attrition; as you get older, you become like the Germans later that afternoon--your machine guns get jammed up, and then you use rifles, and pistols, and eventually bayonets, until the invaders finally destroy you --just like the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

That's what I used to think. Now I've read this book, I see things a bit differently. Of course, I was right in part--our bodies do have a border patrol, the mucosal immune system, which is responsible for more than 300 square metres of vulnerable territory. The mucosal immune system protects the soft, wet surfaces where our bodies come into contact with the outside world--mouth, lungs, eyes, guts. Idan Ben-Barak describes it as

a collection of frontline military units
engaged in a never-ending low-intensity
conflict at an open border, involving a complicated
relationship with the civilian population,
which may or may not contain hostile
elements at any given point.
Here's the thing: as soon as you begin to scrutinise it, you see that the the conflict between disease and immunity is not like a simple battle, with clearly defined goodies and baddies blasting away at each other. It's much more like a modern cyber-conflict. It is, says Ben-Barak, about 'intelligence, counterintelligence ... misdirection, disguise, decoy, deceit, logistics and so on'. At the cellular level, a lot of your enemies dress up to look like civilians, and sometimes they manage to brainwash civilians, who then join the enemy forces. Many cellular participants are prepared to commit suicide. Reading this book, I began to visualise the world of the immune system much less as the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan and much more as an episode of Homeland.

The more you look at it, the more complicated it all seems. Take the microbacterium tuberculosis. This germ breaks into the lungs, where it is arrested by a defensive macrophage, which tries to eat it and dispose of it in its lysosome, 'the floating acid-filled chamber of explosive death'. But the germ manages to trick its way into a different part of the macrophage, where it breeds. Streptococcus bacteria dress themselves up in civilian clothing, by gathering local proteins. Chlamydia will penetrate a cell and then switch off the cell's alarm system. Neisseria gonorrhoeae goes one better, 'in effect sending out a falsely reassuring signal that prevents the immune system from springing into action.'

I'm only scratching the surface here. Nasty things sneak into our bodies, having done their homework, and disguise themselves as parts of us, or find good places to hide, while they carry out their destructive tasks. Like terrorists, sometimes these tiny migrants destroy us. But they don't want to destroy us. What they want is to find a nice place to live and plenty of food. A Ukip spokesman might say they want to bypass our border control and live off our benefit system. But then again, repelling all of them is counterproductive, because lots of bacteria are beneficial--and the debate about which ones, and how many of them we need, is maddeningly complicated.

In fact, there are lots of things we're only just looking into. For instance, conditions such as ADHD might have something to do with the fact that we live in environments that are too sterile. So maybe we need more germs.

In the end, this is a nice chunk of popular science. Ben-Barak keeps his health advice to a minimum, which some will see as refreshing. Here it is:

Eat well, sleep well, move more, drink in
moderation, don't smoke anything legal, vaccinate,
and don't be too fussy about dirt.
Leith, William

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
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Leith, William. "Germ warfare within." Spectator, vol. 326, no. 9719, 6 Dec. 2014, pp. 42+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A392480167/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=88189c36. Accessed 15 May 2023.

Idan Ben-Barak, illus. by Philip Bunting. Roaring Brook, $ 18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-250-85079-9 In casual, erudite prose, Ben-Barak (There's a Skeleton Inside You!) explains what is known about how life began. "What is life?" he starts. "You have it.... A starfish has it.... A car doesn't have it." A spiraling line of type provides a simple, memorable formulation: "Life Is the Way That Some Things Make More Things That Are a Lot Like Themselves but Sometimes a Little Bit Different. Sort of." Relaying where life came from, the pages go "way back" to a young world of exploding volcanoes, flow-ing water, and sttiking lightning. Though it's not known where or exactly how, lines clarify, elements became molecules, and molecules joined to make small bubbles. Eventually, one "very clever little bubble" was able to produce more bubbles "That Were a Lot Like Itself but Sometimes a Little Bit Different." From there, the process complexifies for "literally billions of years," eventually reaching the present panoply of life on Earth, shown in a family tree so large it sprawls across a gatefold spread. Bunting (Your Planet Needs You) illustrates with punchy, sign-like images that take on visual complexity as the story rolls forward. It's an engaging, lucidly written volume that's refreshingly open about the parts of the sequence that remain unknown. Ages 4-8.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"We Go Way Back: A Book About Life on Earth and How It All Began." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 53, 19 Dec. 2022, p. 94. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A731556061/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3e756753. Accessed 15 May 2023.

Ben-Barak, Idan WE GO WAY BACK Roaring Brook Press (Children's None) $18.99 2, 14 ISBN: 978-1-250-85079-9

A look back at the beginnings of life on Earth, capped by a populous double-gatefold family tree.

In a concise yet pithy, playful, and deeply insightful storyline that dovetails nicely with Karen Krossing's One Tiny Bubble, illustrated by Dawn Lo (2022), Ben-Barak and Bunting begin by pointing out that despite diverse looks and likes, we all have one thing in common: life. And what is that? Following definitions proposed by a gallery of unidentified thinkers, including cartoon-style but recognizable versions of Darwin ("Self-reproduction with variation!") and Spinoza ("A mechanism"), the scene shifts back to our planet's early days to track the assembly of loose elements into complex molecules, then simple organisms that could make copies--each, moreover, "a Little Bit Different." A "while" later ("Literally billions of years," as a footnote explains), here we are bursting into view on the climactic gatefold in teeming lines of developing flora and fauna that all, from single-celled prokaryotes at the bottom to a dark-skinned, shorts-wearing preteen near (not at) the top, share both life and slightly stunned expressions conveyed by googly pop eyes. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Sneakily cerebral for all its apparent simplicity. (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Ben-Barak, Idan: WE GO WAY BACK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A724445646/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=71ee9173. Accessed 15 May 2023.

Ben-Barak, Idan THERE'S A SKELETON INSIDE YOU! Roaring Brook (Children's None) $16.99 9, 8 ISBN: 978-1-250-17537-3

Space travelers discover the utility of hands and what’s inside them: bones, muscles, and nerves.

The Australian creative team who introduced readers to microbes in Do Not Lick This Book (2017) returns with a similarly metafictive introduction to our structural insides. Zooming through space to a friend’s birthday party, Quog and Oort accidentally crash their ship on Earth. Breaking the fourth wall, the narrator asks readers to help these aliens by turning the page to open their space ship. Quog, a green blob, is impressed by this demonstration of the utility of hands and immediately grows some but finds she also needs bones, muscles, and nerves. Readers are given plenty of opportunities to interact with the story: putting their hands on the pages so that Oort, a pink, three-eyed gas cloud, can see inside; lifting the book; and even turning a page with their eyes closed. There’s a departing high-five after the ETs successfully fix their vessel, then a grand, wordless spread shows what hands and arms are really good for: hugs. A final tongue-in-cheek spread offers instructions for growing your own extra hands. The uncluttered, flat design of the playful illustrations has the air of animation and nicely contrasts with three-dimensional views of bones, muscles and ligaments, and nerves set on a surprisingly pink background. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-16-inch double-page spreads viewed at 87.5% of actual size.)

A clever presentation of some basic anatomy by a duo with talented hands indeed. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Ben-Barak, Idan: THERE'S A SKELETON INSIDE YOU!" Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A630892193/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=268ca385. Accessed 15 May 2023.

Do Not Lick This Book.

By Idan Ben-Barak. Illus. by Julian Frost.

June 2018.40p. Roaring Brook/Neal Porter, $16.99 (9781250175366).579. K-Gr. 3.

Microbiologist Ben-Barak and YouTuber Frost join forces to introduce the concept of microbes. After they discuss size (3,422,167, give or take a few million, can fit on a dot), an E. coli named Min leads readers on a tour of four habitats: a sheet of paper, a tooth surface, a shirt, and a belly button. As Min travels from place to place, she picks up other creatures along the way, including Rae, a streptococcus; Dennis, a fungus; and Jake, a corynebacterium. Frost's colorful, cartoon art adds humor to the text, especially when the characters are superimposed on actual electron micrographs. Each germ engages in banter ("Help yourselves to a delicious chunk of dead skin"), and textual directions ("Touch the circle with your finger to pick her up") will engage young listeners. Ben-Barak avoids complex terms and discussion of cell structure, reproduction, and disease that might confuse or frighten the intended audience, but an afterword identifies each microbe and offers additional information. This friendly introduction to the microscopic world is appropriate even for the squeamish. --Kay Weisman

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Weisman, Kay. "Do Not Lick This Book." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 18, 15 May 2018, p. 40. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A541400888/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5c19fe12. Accessed 15 May 2023.

Ben-Barak, Idan DO NOT LICK THIS BOOK Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (Children's Informational) $16.99 6, 5 ISBN: 978-1-250-17536-6

Why not? Because "IT'S FULL OF GERMS."

Of course, Ben-Barak rightly notes, so is everything else--from your socks to the top of Mount Everest. Just to demonstrate, he invites readers to undertake an exploratory adventure (only partly imaginary): First touch a certain seemingly blank spot on the page to pick up a microbe named Min, then in turn touch teeth, shirt, and navel to pick up Rae, Dennis, and Jake. In the process, readers watch crews of other microbes digging cavities ("Hey kid, brush your teeth less"), spreading "lovely filth," and chowing down on huge rafts of dead skin. For the illustrations, Frost places dialogue balloons and small googly-eyed cartoon blobs of diverse shape and color onto Rundgren's photographs, taken using a scanning electron microscope, of the fantastically rugged surfaces of seemingly smooth paper, a tooth, textile fibers, and the jumbled crevasses in a belly button. The tour concludes with more formal introductions and profiles for Min and the others: E. coli, Streptococcus, Aspergillus niger, and Corynebacteria. "Where will you take Min tomorrow?" the author asks teasingly. Maybe the nearest bar of soap.

Science at its best: informative and gross. (Informational picture book. 6-9)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Ben-Barak, Idan: DO NOT LICK THIS BOOK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A536571114/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5edece01. Accessed 15 May 2023.

The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes.

By Idan Ben-Barak.

Aug. 2009.288p. Basic, $24 (9780465018871 ). 579.

Australian microbiologist Ben-Barak gives an enthusiastic tour of single-celled life. Avoiding jargon, he adopts colloquial language that illustrates how the world works for, say, E. coli. Ben-Barak periodically mentions that petri-dish protagonist of Carl Zimmer's Microcosm (2008) as he touches on myriad microbes in a range of environments, from the abyss of the sea to the inside of humans, explaining how they defend themselves, eat, move, and reproduce. The cell's complex metabolism comes clearly into focus, after which Ben-Barak swings the discussion to what should be people's personal interest in microbes, if only because they contribute several pounds to an individual's weight. Fun facts are one attraction of Ben-Barak's work another is the importance the author accords to what microbes do to us. Perhaps readers will become furious hand washers after learning about the culpability of viruses and bacteria in diseases; perhaps they'll be inspired by the possibilities of enlisting them to kill cancer or clean up pollution; certainly, they'll be better informed by Ben-Barak's entertaining approach. --Gilbert Taylor

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Taylor, Gilbert. "The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes." Booklist, vol. 105, no. 22, 1 Aug. 2009, p. 18. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A206172773/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8b0bb85b. Accessed 15 May 2023.

Leith, William. "Germ warfare within." Spectator, vol. 326, no. 9719, 6 Dec. 2014, pp. 42+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A392480167/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=88189c36. Accessed 15 May 2023. "We Go Way Back: A Book About Life on Earth and How It All Began." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 53, 19 Dec. 2022, p. 94. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A731556061/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3e756753. Accessed 15 May 2023. "Ben-Barak, Idan: WE GO WAY BACK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A724445646/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=71ee9173. Accessed 15 May 2023. "Ben-Barak, Idan: THERE'S A SKELETON INSIDE YOU!" Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A630892193/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=268ca385. Accessed 15 May 2023. Weisman, Kay. "Do Not Lick This Book." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 18, 15 May 2018, p. 40. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A541400888/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5c19fe12. Accessed 15 May 2023. "Ben-Barak, Idan: DO NOT LICK THIS BOOK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A536571114/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5edece01. Accessed 15 May 2023. Taylor, Gilbert. "The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes." Booklist, vol. 105, no. 22, 1 Aug. 2009, p. 18. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A206172773/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8b0bb85b. Accessed 15 May 2023.

• Publishers Weekly
  https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780465018871
  Word count: 220

  The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes
  Idan Ben-Barak. Basic Books, $24 (204pp) ISBN 978-0-465-01887-1
  Ben-Barak (Small Wonders) writes with verve, enthusiasm and humor about critters that most people find frightening, repugnant, and worthy of mass slaughter via antibiotic hand sanitizer; in this illuminating book, Ben-Barak assures us that without them, ""we'll all be dead within days, if not hours."" Sure, they cause horrible diseases and turn food rotten, but microbes also clean up waste (including radioactive contamination, chemicals and plastics) and play an important role in digestion (humans have ten times more microbials than human cells). Flexing degrees in both microbiology and medical science, Australian-based scientist Ben-Barak covers a lot of territory, beginning with the origins of single-celled life, 3.8 billion years ago. Connecting the mechanisms of asexual reproduction used by single-celled bacteria to human sexual reproduction, he explains lucidly the mechanics of DNA and RNA, as well as the rapid mutation rate of new strains of germs, diseases and genuinely useful microbes used for thousands of years to make bread, beer, wine and yogurt, and more recently in the manufacturing of hormones. Wonderfully informative and entertaining, Ben-Barak's latest is a brilliant read for both general readers and science buffs.

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