The Radium Girls: Young Readers’ Edition

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore is ‘The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark’. This book is about a time during the early 1900s when girls and women worked in factories. They painted glow in the dark watches with radium paint! The girls didn’t know that the radium was dangerous until people started getting sick. It was sad and scary to read about how so many people suffered because they were poisoned by radium. The book talks about how the girls fought back to get money for their families and to make sure other girls didn’t get poisoned with the radium. This is a long book but it is exciting to read, even if sometimes it is difficult to think about girls getting poisoned at their jobs. I like that this book includes a timeline and a glossary because that makes it easier to follow along with what happened and when. Also, there are many photographs in the book which bring the story to life. I would recommend this book for readers over age twelve.