Ida Mlakar was born on the outskirts of Kranj and spent her childhood there. He father was a shoemaker who wrote poetry and loved philosophy. In the first year of primary school, when she had already decided to be a writer, she wrote a short story about a lost bean. During her university years she wrote poetry, and later radio plays and short lyrical texts. She studied Slovene Studies and Comparative Literature with Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, and since 1995 has been senior librarian at the Oton Župančič Library, or the Villa Villekulla as she affectionately calls it. Since 2001 she has been co-editor of the Priročnik za branje kakovostnih mladinskih knjig (Manual for Reading High Quality Books for Young People), she also participates in the organisation of the programmes for Expert Wednesdays and in the promotion of good reading (the Golden Pear seal of quality). She has published more than ten picture books, her Cipercoperček (Magic Spells) was translated into English (2012) and Chinese (2014) and turned into an animated film (2014). In 2017, she received the Kristina Brenkova award for the best Slovene original picture book for O kravi, ki je lajala v luno (The Cow that Barked at the Moon), illustrated by Peter Škerl; in 2016, the International Youth Library in Munich included it in its White Ravens Catalogue.