Meet the author

Idan Ben-Barak.

Writer · Australia

Idan Ben-Barak: a microbiologist turned children's author whose interactive, award-winning science picture books, illustrated by Julian Frost, make germs and skeletons gigglingly funny and genuinely educational for 3 to 7s.

Idan Ben-Barak is an Australian author based in Melbourne, a microbiologist with degrees in microbiology and in the history and philosophy of science, who writes joyfully silly science books for the very young. In our corpus he is represented by Do Not Lick This Book and Argh! There's a Skeleton Inside You!, both published by Allen & Unwin and illustrated by Julian Frost. The first takes readers on a giddy interactive tour of the microscopic world, following a microbe called Min across a tooth and a shirt using real electron-microscope photographs; the second builds the human body piece by piece as two hapless aliens grow themselves a hand. Participatory, gigglingly funny and made to be read aloud again and again, they turn real science into a team effort. Do Not Lick This Book won Australia's CBCA Eve Pownall Award for information books.