Do Not Lick This Book

Starred review from May 1, 2018
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)

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May 15, 2018
Grades K-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-style 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2019
Scanning electron microscope images by Linnea Rundgren. In this nifty, lighthearted introduction to microbiology, a microbe named Min moves from the book's page to parts of the human body then to a shirt, picking up friends (fellow microbes) along the way. Goofy illustrated microbes are backed up by "really, really close up" photo-images as they comment about their environments (on a tooth: "we're digging cavities!"). A final page reveals more scientific facts about microbes.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

April 5, 2017
What a fun, beautifully designed and repulsive book! Its premise is humble: let’s meet some microbes. It sits between educational text and narrative picture book, following Min the microbe on a small journey from the pages of the book to various parts of the reader’s body (via an interactive element reminiscent of Herve Tullet’s Press Here) and back—befriending some tiny germy pals along the way. While mostly entertainment, a page of more scientific information at the back offers factual context. The book is very appealing; kids both at school and at home will delight in the gross elements while adults will also enjoy it (then probably give their hands a long soapy scrub afterwards!). Julian Frost’s simple cartoon microbes are cheerful creatures who just want to enjoy some dirt (if they look familiar, it’s because he animated the Australian rail safety campaign ‘Dumb Ways to Die’). They’re integrated into Linnea Rundgren’s electron microscope images: the intriguing zoomed-in textures of familiar objects. Idan Ben-Barak links the two graphic elements with a quirky sense of humour (primarily the asides of the many microbes populating each extreme close-up). The main tone is that of a jolly field guide: imagine Roger Hargreaves leading you through the microscopic world. The only thing wrong with this book is that it doesn’t go for longer. Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is an editor/writer and works at The Hobart Bookshop