The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark

by Kate Moore

Overview

Explore the unbelievable true story of America's glowing girls and their fight for justice in the young readers edition of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The Radium Girls. This enthralling new edition includes all-new material, including a glossary, timeline, and dozens of bonus photos.

Amid the excitement of the early twentieth century, hundreds of young women spend their days hard at work painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. The painters consider themselves lucky—until they start suffering from a mysterious illness. As the corporations try to cover up a shocking secret, these shining girls suddenly find themselves at the center of a deadly scandal.

The Radium Girls: Young Readers Edition tells the unbelievable true story of these incredible women, whose determination to fight back saved countless lives.

This new edition of the national bestseller is perfect for:

• Educators looking for history books for kids ages 9 to 12, nonfiction books for kids, biographies for kids, and real stories around the industrial revolution, chemistry, and science
• Parents, educators, and librarians looking for stories about strong women, inspiring books for girls, childrens books about women in history, and famous women books for girls
• Young readers who want to read one of the most inspiring and shocking narratives of the early 20th century

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728209487
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	205,708
Lexile:	880L (what's this?)
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kate Moore is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Radium Girls, which won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Best History, was voted U.S. librarians’ favorite nonfiction book of 2017,and was named a Notable Nonfiction Book of 2018 by the American Library Association. A British writer based in London, Kate writes across a variety of genres and has had multiple titles on the Sunday Times bestseller list. She is passionate about politics, storytelling, and resurrecting forgotten heroes.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

List of Key Characters xii

Prologue xv

Part 1 Knowledge 1

1 First Day 3

2 Wartime Warning 9

3 All Change 17

4 The Mysterious Maladies of Mollie Maggia 22

5 Girls Wanted 28

6 Mere Coincidence? 33

7 Radium Games 39

8 Strange Symptoms 45

9 "Something Going On" 52

10 Investigations Underway 60

11 Warning Shots 68

12 Lip… Dip… Paint 75

13 Truth and Lies 82

14 Hoffman Helps 90

15 Making History 100

16 Hope 109

Part 2 Power 119

17 The List of the Doomed 121

18 Dead End 130

19 Until Death Do Us Part 137

20 Make or Break 143

21 "Fraud of Frauds" 151

22 In the Shadow of the Church Spire 158

23 Back from the Grave 164

24 The Trial of the Decade 170

25 On the Stand 177

26 "Far from Finished in This Fight" 188

27 Settlement? 192

28 The Chill of Fear 199

29 Happy Ending? 205

30 Midnight Machinations 212

31 A Cold, Cold Winter 223

32 Time-Bomb Tumors 229

33 A Very Big Mistake 235

34 The End of the Adventure 240

35 Brave Until the Last 246

Part 3 Justice 251

36 Conspiracy? 253

37 "Very Suspicious" 258

38 Verdict 265

39 Fighting Back 271

40 A Desire for Justice 277

41 Legal Champion 283

42 A Long and Lonely Fall 289

43 Her Day in Court 294

44 Too Weak for Tears 302

45 Bedside Hearing 309

46 The Society of the Living Dead 315

47 One More Day 321

Epilogue 330

Postscript 345

Timeline of Events 349

Glossary 354

Abbreviations 360

Photo Acknowledgments 362

Notes 369

Select Bibliography 388

Index 392

Acknowledgments 405

About the Author 409

Editorial Reviews

"A fine, moving, important work for young readers. " — Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

"Moore’s personal, captivating prose [renders] this shining piece of history unforgettable." — Booklist, STARRED Review

"An impeccably written young readers’ edition of an excellent work of history." — School Library Journal

"[A] lesson in corporate greed, bystander ignorance, and the power of perseverance that will inspire and educate all young revolutionaries." — The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"This thrilling young readers’ edition is an essential purchase for all middle school and high school libraries." — Youth Services Book Review

"A 2020 A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year" — A Mighty Girl

"Moore’s gripping account follows the women’s fight for justice amid overwhelming odds... best suited for more mature readers." — Kristin Chapman, World Magazine

"Gripping, heartbreaking, and deeply inspiring—very much worth reading." — The Children's Book Review

From the Publisher

05/01/2020

Gr 7 Up—This dense, meticulously researched book covers the courageous determination of young women who unknowingly poisoned themselves while doing their job. In 1917, the same year the United States entered World War I, dozens of young women, many of them teenagers from working-class families, took up positions at the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation in Newark, NJ. They painted watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint made with radium. This element was still relatively new, and scientists were unaware of how dangerous it was. Moore offers a heartbreaking account of the pain and suffering many of the "radium girls" experienced. Doctors were mystified at their condition, and their employers refused to take responsibility, even discrediting the characters of the girls involved. Moore also explores the story of the women who worked at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, IL. Court cases dragged on for years, plagued by bureaucracy and the powerful corporations' determination to cover up any responsibility they had in the girls' illness. The author does a great job balancing the many court proceedings, reports, and individual profiles of those involved with compelling personal stories of the brave women who suffered the most. The size and depth of the text make this a suitable title for astute older readers. VERDICT An impeccably written but arguably unnecessary young readers' edition of an excellent work of history.—Kristy Pasquariello, Westwood Public Library, MA

School Library Journal

★ 2020-05-17
Starting in 1916, young women in New Jersey were hired to paint the luminous dials of watches—with lethal consequences.

The young readers’ edition of The Radium Girls (2017) pulls no punches. As in the adult version, it describes in agonizing detail the diseases that destroyed the lives of young dial painters who were instructed to “lip point” their brushes with each dip of radium paint. They’d leave work literally glowing, having absorbed such a large quantity of the dangerous radioactive element that they’d been told was good for their health. Moore tracks more than a dozen of the girls through their extreme suffering as the radium loosened their teeth, destroyed their jaws, ate away their bones, and caused lethal tumors. Even after the deadly aftereffects were documented, another company opened a dial-painting studio in Illinois with a similar outcome. Although these young women’s lives often ended tragically early, their determination to achieve a legal victory against the negligent companies had lasting consequences: Both important laws that would protect future workers from unsafe employment practices and improve workers’ compensation laws and a better understanding of the medical outcomes of radioactivity exposure, which also helped end nuclear tests, resulted. The only discordant note in this sensitive presentation is a single unnecessary, pandering sentence: “Grace recalled that even her boogers became luminously green!”

A fine, moving, important work for young readers. (timeline, end notes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10-18)

Kirkus Reviews