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)

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 Iera 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 liveswhile 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