ALA Booklist (Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2006)

Like Nick Healy's overview, Marie Curie (2005), this readable biography examines Curie's life and work as a groundbreaking scientist and as an independent woman. Unlike Healy's, though, McClafferty's account is more detailed and includes extensive documentation with chapter source notes. The groundbreaking science is as thrilling as the personal story, which describes Curie's struggle to get to college, her happy marriage to Pierre Curie and their work together, and her recognition as the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, a prize she won again later for her work in chemistry. In addition to the triumph, though, McClafferty shows that Curie could be harsh and indifferent to her own family. The spacious design makes the text easy to read, and occasional photos, including one of the interior of the shed where she and Pierre began their research, bring the story closer.

Horn Book (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2006)

This biography is framed within a sociocultural context, beginning with Curie's underground education while Poland was ruled by Russia, to the portable x-ray machines she invented and distributed to the French forces in World War I, to the oft-whimsical (and dangerous) commercial uses in which the element she discovered, radium, was used. Photos accent the straightforward text. Source notes, websites. Bib., ind.

Kirkus Reviews

An able biography tells, as the subtitle suggests, the stories of both Marie Curie and her famous discovery. After a precis of Curie's childhood that relies a little too much on daughter Eve's hagiography, the narrative settles, in measured fashion, on the great scientist's pioneering work, first with husband Pierre and then without. Liberal use of primary source material gives readers a terrific sense of Curie's state of mind as she worked and loved, archival illustrations taking them into the Curies' lab and notebooks. Later chapters intersperse the account of Curie's life with the meteoric rise and fall of the fortunes of radium, her most famous discovery, drawing heavily on both contemporary news coverage and advertising to demonstrate the near total embrace of radium as a cure-all. Accounts of groundbreaking radiation therapy give way to the travails of the "Radium Girls"—women whose repeated exposure to radium in the paint they used for glow-in-the-dark watches proved fatal. There are many biographies of Curie; this one stands out in its shared focus on her discovery and its legacy. (notes, bibliography, web sites, index) (Biography. 10-14)

School Library Journal

Gr 5-7-The author of The Head Bone's Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky and Wonderful X-Ray (Farrar, 2001) takes on a related topic with equal success in this profile of the driven scientist most closely associated with the discovery of radium. Born Manya Sklodowska and educated in her native Poland at a "Floating University" that operated in defiance of harsh Russian policies, Curie moved to Paris to continue her studies. There, both before and after the tragic death of her beloved, kindred spirit Pierre, she dedicated her life to pure research and enlisted her father-in-law to care for her children. She never took out patents, so even as she was rising to international fame, entrepreneurs worldwide began trumpeting wild claims for the healing benefits of radioactive products. McClafferty chronicles both that fad-and its dismal outcome, as the effects of long-term radiation poisoning slowly became horribly apparent. Noting that Curie maintained lifelong ties with her native land and also did significant medical work in WWI, the author follows her career to its final, illness-ridden days, then ends with an apt summation of her legacy. Archival photos and substantial multimedia resource lists enhance an engrossing study of a great scientist who tried to turn away from the world and ended up changing it profoundly.-John Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Voice of Youth Advocates

At a time when most women did not even attend college, Marie Curie was a working scientist who discovered two elements, pioneered the science of radioactivity, and won the Nobel prize-twice. One of a crop of recent biographies of Marie Curie, McClafferty's offering presents Curie's life in terms of overcoming obstacles: the struggle to get an education, the loss of her beloved husband, the pressure to finance her scientific work, and her quiet resistance to the prejudices of the time. McClafferty weaves in the story of radium, which provides as much dramatic tension as the biography itself. Readers will wince at the Curies' constant casual handling of the radioactive substance. Even more haunting is the image of watch-dial factory girls licking their brushes dipped in radium paint. Despite increasing evidence, Marie Curie was slow to attribute her family's health problems to radium. Even when her institute finally adopted safety measures, she ignored them, perhaps reluctant to admit that the source of her success was killing her. McClafferty's simple writing style makes the science easy to understand while still conveying the excitement underlying Curie's work. Although some pictures are of poor quality, many are fascinating relics of the times: advertisements for medicines and household products blindly proclaiming the benefits of radium. With a somewhat dull cover, librarians will need to push this book, but teens will find it an appealing choice for science and biography projects as well as recreational reading.-Tracy Piombo.