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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSOn an icy February morning in 1917, fourteen-year-old Katherine Schaub starts an exciting new job painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark radium paint in Newark, New Jersey. Radium is advertised everywhere as a health wonder, the pay is among the best a young woman can earn, and the radium dust makes the dial-painters shine. Every new girl learns the same "lip, dip, paint" routine, shaping her brush to a point with her lips, and when the workers ask whether the paint can hurt them, they are told it cannot. During the First World War the company opens a bigger plant in Orange, New Jersey, where Grace Fryer and hundreds of other young women join the work. In 1922 a different firm, the Radium Dial Company, opens a studio in an old high school in Ottawa, Illinois, where shy Catherine Wolfe and her friends learn the same routine. By then, though, some of the New Jersey women have aching jaws, teeth that will not heal, and stiff, painful legs that their doctors cannot explain. This true story follows the dial-painters in both states as they try to find out what is making them sick.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition)
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition). Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a snow-loving fourteen-year-old walk four blocks to her first day of work?
✓ Answer
The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition) by Kate Moore
Katherine Schaub, five weeks from her fifteenth birthday, walks the short four blocks to her first day at the Newark studio on an icy February morning in 1917. She has always loved her hometown's winter snows, and she is thrilled about the glamorous job she got by simply asking the boss for one.
- First half
In what book is a baby-faced lawyer fresh out of Yale already a junior partner?
✓ Answer
The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition) by Kate Moore
Raymond Berry, not even thirty, has blond hair, blue eyes, and a brain as sharp as a tack. In May 1927 he takes the case of Grace Fryer and Katherine Schaub and finds a clever way around the statute of limitations.
- First half
In what book does a tired worker steer by a church spire on her way to work?
✓ Answer
The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition) by Kate Moore
In August 1927, Ella Cruse slams the screen door of her house on Clinton Street, calls goodbye to her mom, and walks to the Ottawa studio, taking her bearings as always from the spire of St. Columba. She has always been healthy, but lately she feels tired all the time.
- Second half
In what book does a woman's beautiful blond hair turn snow white with shock?
✓ Answer
The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition) by Kate Moore
In 1929 the company's board of doctors keeps putting the New Jersey women through test after test and experimental treatments, and Edna's blond hair turns snow white. A few years later Albina's hair turns completely white too.
- Second half
In what book does a limping woman count her blessings as though they were rosary beads?
✓ Answer
The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition) by Kate Moore
On her slow walk to work in August 1931, Catherine Wolfe cheers herself up by counting her blessings. She has her health apart from her limp, her fiancé Tom Donohue, and a $15-a-week job at a time when six million Americans are out of work.
- Near the end
In what book does a grandmother tie a rope to a chain-link fence to jump rope with one arm?
✓ Answer
The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark (Young Readers' Edition) by Kate Moore
Charlotte Purcell lives to be eighty-two and is adored by her grandchildren. When her granddaughter Jan asks to learn to jump rope, Charlotte finds a way to show her, teaching Jan that whatever life throws at you, you can adapt.
