Radium girls /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Compelling, inspiring, and radiant." -- FOREWORD

"Excels in showing the camaraderie of the 'Ghost Girls.'" -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Another example of how great graphic novels are at teaching history." -- BOOK RIOT

It's 1918 in Orange, New Jersey, and everyone knows the "Ghost Girls."

The proud holders of well-paying jobs at the local watch factory, these working-class young women gain their nickname from the fine dusting of glowing, radioactive powder that clings to their clothes after every shift painting watch dials. The soft, greenish glow even stains their lips and tongues, which they use to point the fine brushes used in their work. It's perfectly harmless . . . or so claims the watch manufacturer.

When teeth start falling out, followed by jawbones, the dial painters become the unprepared vanguard on the frontlines of the burgeoning workers' rights movement. Desperate for compensation and acknowledgement from the company that has doomed them, the Ghost Girls must fight, not just for their own lives but the future of every woman to follow them.

A stunning graphic novel retelling of the shocking and inspiring true story.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

This haunting graphic novel captures the tragic history of the "radium girls," depicting through stylized soft-pencil art how the young laborers transition from joyful days at the beach to gruesome illness and death. Painting glowing numbers on watch faces is considered a good job for young women in 1918 New Jersey--"lip-pointing" the brushes into their mouths is just part of the process. The workers laugh when they themselves start glowing, even when it's enough to garner complaints at a movie theater. The factory's management, though, is aware that the women are ingesting dangerous radium. As missing teeth, miscarriages, and deaths mount, Cy's palette of impressionistic purples chillingly morphs into eerie greens. When the women realize the peril they've been subjected to, they launch what becomes a landmark legal battle to hold their employers accountable. Their story has been told and retold in books and film, and while this abbreviated version is lighter on historical detail, it excels in showing the camaraderie of the "Ghost Girls" as they become accidental activists. It's a classic but still relevant case study of how workers--often young women--get subjected to environmental risks. The deceptively gentle art style makes this accessible history all the more shocking. (July)

School Library Journal Review

In a tale that mingles tragedy with affirmations of the strength of sororal bonds, a French graphic artist looks back at the experiences of three World War I--era sisters and their friends who were poisoned by the radium paint used on watch dials at a New Jersey factory and went on to lose teeth, jaws, health, babies, and lives--while battling stubborn corporate denials of responsibility. The art, done in colored pencil with highlights in a lurid hue that Cy, in an appended interview, appropriately dubs "radium green," is sketchy enough to hide gruesome details. Nevertheless, it strongly captures the emotional atmosphere as playful exchanges about ordinary life events and the way lips and fingertips glow in the dark give way first to dawning horror at early symptoms, physical breakdowns, and news of the deaths of coworkers, then to angry determination to fight for recognition and compensation from factory managers and scientists who had reassured them that the paint was harmless. An author interview with visual outtakes caps this poignant, powerful tribute. Steer older readers stirred to know more to her main source, Kate Moore's The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. VERDICT Of particular interest to upper level readers as a landmark case in the history of workplace safety legislation, but what shines here most brightly are the voices and characters of the women involved.--John Peters

Booklist Review

Cy's Radium Girls tells the tragic tale of a group of working-class women whose job painting with radium powder ultimately dooms them. At the start of the book, these women are proud to have well-paying jobs painting watches and are enjoying their lives in the early 1920s--as much as they can while avoiding the law, in any case. While the focus is on their work and the radium poisoning that comes with it, the book offers readers a glimpse into a world where drinking is illegal and speakeasies abound, where women's bathing suits are literally measured for length, and the right to vote is newly won. Rendered in colored pencil with soft hues, the artwork is wonderful and softens what could have been a gory comic. Readers may be shocked or upset by some of the characters' views. By the end, the women are fighting not just for compensation for their own ruined lives but for the foundations of workers' rights for all.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Cyrielle Evrard, publishing under the nom de plume Cy, was born in 1990. She studied at the Ã%cole de Condé Paris, where she did a higher cycle of illustration after a BTS Visual Communication. Her previous work includes The True Sex of Real Life, volumes 1 and 2.