Some of the workers were as young as 14, most were in their late teens or early 20s, and all were female. This astonishing story of their jobs, the pain and sickness that followed, and then the lawsuits for justice for these women, is well documented and well told by author Kate Moore. It was called lip-pointing, and they all did it in order to get the fine point needed to paint the numbers. The radium girls were taught how to paint the luminous numbers on the faces of the timepieces by putting the brushes into their mouths, and then in the radium-laced paint, and then back in their mouths. They enjoyed the camaraderie of the work place, and the pay was great. These girls were eager to get their jobs and happy to go to work. Kate Moore, thank you for bringing Catherine Wolfe Donohue, Katherine Schaub, Grace Fryer, Margaret Looney, Pearl Payne, and the other Radium Girls back into the spotlight. In showing how they lived, not just how they died, Moore puts the heart and soul into this chapter of history- and makes it a chapter we should all know and remember. How they laughed and loved and found strength they didn't even know they had. How they loved parties and planned for their weddings and dreamed of the children they would have. How they liked to spend those high wages they were making. These women weren't just court cases with gruesome physical wounds Moore reminds readers how pretty they were. What makes this piece of history even more poignant is how Moore brings each woman to life. And what a group of women! Knowing it was already too late for them, they continued to fight their legal battles for those who would follow after them. Moore outlines just what these young women had to endure, both physically and mentally, as they fought for justice. The unbridled greed wasn't surprising, and neither was the difference in the companies' reactions to what was done when it was discovered male lab workers were becoming ill versus what was done when the female dial painters became ill. The corporate greed shown boggled the mind as well as the legal wranglings to avoid having their profits cut into. That all changed once it became known how deadly radium is. These people didn't realize the time bomb they were treating so cavalierly. (For example, the radium waste from the dial-painting factories looked like sand, so it was offloaded to schools for their playground sandboxes.) But, you have to cut them some slack. Reading from today's more enlightened perspective, what people were doing with radium in the early twentieth century was not only nauseating but horrifying. Guess what? Radium Girls is also one of my Best Reads of the Year, which means that whenever Kate Moore has a new book published, I'm buying it.Moore's writing style brings all the people involved, all the facts, to life. Young readers who want to read one of the most inspiring and shocking narratives of the early 20th centuryĪfter reading Moore's The Woman They Could Not Silence and having it be one of my Best Reads of the Year, I remembered that I had a copy of Radium Girls, so I had to read it, too.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.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.This new edition of the national bestseller is perfect for: The Radium Girls: Young Readers Edition tells the unbelievable true story of these incredible women, whose determination to fight back saved countless lives. As the corporations try to cover up a shocking secret, these shining girls suddenly find themselves at the center of a deadly scandal. The painters consider themselves lucky-until they start suffering from a mysterious illness. This enthralling new edition includes all-new material, including a glossary, timeline, and dozens of bonus photos.Īmid 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. 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.
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