Do Not Lick This Book by Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost - ESSENTIAL

Do Not Lick This Book by Idan Ben-Barak and Julian Frost. PICTURE BOOK. Neal Porter (Macmillan), 2017. $17. 9781250175366

BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3) - ESSENTIAL. 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH 

In this book we follow four different microbes into different environments. Min the microbe takes us up close on a sheet of paper and into a mouth, Rae takes us up close with a shirt, and Dennis takes us into a belly button where we meet Jake. Each location is represented with a microscopic photograph. This book has an interactive quality, asking the reader to pick up the microbes on their finger and place them on their teeth, for example. The final page explains that Min is an E. coli, Rae is a streptococcus, Dennis is a fungus, and Jake is a corynebacterium. 

This book would be great for a beginning of the school year lesson on germs. The educational side of this book is not heavy handed, but sneaks in a lot of good information simply through the microscope photographs. It is fun to see what things look like close up and it makes the reason behind washing our hands and brushing our teeth make sense. My only complaint is that the authors didn’t actually define what a microbe is, instead relying on examples of microbes. 

Jen Wecker, HS English Teacher