CCK reporting for duty. We are collectively holding our noses and putting Radium Girls forward. What follows is our tag-team dialogue to support this unfortunate but necessary selection.
C1 - Both Radium Girls and Tune it out tick along quickly, each following an easy to follow arc with an intriguing concept to bring young readers in. Both texts also cover content that many young readers won’t be familiar with, explaining radium poisoning in dial painting factories, and sensory processing disorder, respectively. Yet both of these texts lets the audience down in the same manner; they focus too much on the suffering of the young women they depict, failing to represent them as fully rendered humans.
K - Agreed. I think the books are reasonably accessible and will engage a variety of readers. Both offer perspectives and conflicts that are engaging and not-common-fodder for YA texts. Both fall a bit short. TIO because it underdevelops both the characters and the conflict it establishes and RG because it presents itself as nonfiction but then sensationalizes and fictionalizes things for theatrical emotional impact. It feels tabloidy and maybe even a bit exploitive.
C2 - Full disclosure: If I had my druthers, neither would move forward. That said, I realize holding my breath is not an option, so I’d best get on with it…
Rarely have I reacted to a book with such ire as I did with Radium Girls. Ask my family, I was hostile for the weekend I dedicated to reading this book. I began in earnest, hopeful that I would learn all about these historic women. Rather than developing a backstory that would bring them to life, they are reduced to flat characterizations with trivial information.
Hair styles and fancy coats? Engagement plans?
Jaw bones come out in doctors’ hands, people.
With. Ease.
Tumors the size of footballs.
The horror I felt in reading how their bodies literally disintegrated was matched by my horror in the apparent lack of awareness of who they were as human beings.
C1 - In Radium Girls there are frequent and ghastly descriptions of the young victim’s radium poisoning as they fight to bring their employers to justice. Jaw bones are being pulled out by dentists without effort- these women are literally disintegrating from the inside out. At the same time, the women never felt fully formed to the reader because the only thing we really know about them is their medical doom. We get a few brief descriptions about who will miss them when they die, but other than that the descriptions of the women are brief and perfunctory to make room for the detailed accounting of their physical deterioration. They are reduced to damaged bodies rather than people.
K - I don’t know why Moore thought it necessary to dramatize and fictionalize. I absolutely get the fear that names and dates and facts would read like a phonebook but if Moore wasn’t capable of writing impactful nonfiction then she should have written historical fiction instead. I’m actually a bit insulted for the young readers she thinks can’t empathize with these human beings without her creative musings stringing the facts together. That said, the horror is real and it’s not all that historical. The injustice of it would have a powerful impact particularly when connected to contemporary examples of employer abuses and the industrial toxins that affect people all around the world this very minute.
C2 - I spent much of the time wondering at the decision to leave these women’s characterizations so undeveloped. Is it simply because information was unavailable? The choice to steer readers to attend to the physical descriptions did draw attention to the discrimination and negligence that still makes me ragey (I know ragey isn’t a word, but it’s the right one.). I would never, ever, hand this to a young reader to read on their own. Never. But the knowledge of what happened merits discussion.
C1 - Tune it out also focuses on the protagonist’s discomfort caused by an unnamed sensory processing disorder as she is pulled away from her mother who is struggling financially. While some of the descriptions of Louise’s reactions to stimuli are helpful and well done we constantly see her world through the lens of her struggle only. Also - money seems to magically fix quite a bit for Louise, in a way that feels classist. If only her young, unmarried mother had made better choices, Louise could have been happy, the book seems to suggest. The idea that she would choose to remain with her aunt at the end because her financial circumstances are better, saying that she wants “everyone,” feels oversimplified and gross. Kids don’t do this. It really reveals the lack of development of Louise and her mother that this is the happy ending for the book.
K - Yup. Samesies. I do think the depiction of feeling intensely overstimulated would resonate with students in an important way but the magical private-school-rich-auntie fix bothers me. Both Louise and her mom deserved better. Also you can see the ending coming eight miles away which I found annoying and formulaic.
C2 - Is Disneyfied a word? Anyone? No? Again, it’s the right word for Tune it Out. Characters, again, are developed in ways that make them easily digested but easily forgotten. A rich kid ignored by his dad. A girl with blue hair. As I read, I often felt the author just skimmed the surface of what could have made this a much more meaningful book. Readers are not afforded opportunities to see people grapple with difficult conversations that should undoubtedly emerge when a girl pulls her own hair out IN FRONT OF HER PEERS. How does one really cope in social settings when managing a sensory processing disorder? What does it mean to befriend someone who is different? I really do get what the author was trying to do, but in the end, I think that readers who do feel removed for any reason from their peers would ultimately find this text isolating.
So which one to move to the next round?
Radium Girls. Radium Girls. Radium Girls.
C1 - It will turn your stomach, but the purpose of the text perhaps is not to explore the lives of the women, but to tell the story of Radium poisoning and the fight for work place safety standards, and it tells that story well. This focus is reinforced by the post-script that moves ahead in time to show the progression of the story throughout history. It is a cautionary tale well told.
K - Agreed. Though I do think it misses the opportunity to make connections to any contemporary issues in the epilogue or postscript. It seems to end on a big old “aren’t we lucky these brave women fought back and solved this problem?!” kind of vibe. This story is important because these issues persist. I think Radium Girls has way more potential for constructive, long-term impact.
C2 - This round reinforced something for me: the value of seeing a teacher react to a book, even if those reactions are negative. As I said previously, I would never hand Radium Girls over for some light weekend reading. That said, the issues within the text warrant critical conversation.
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