Reading Radioactive felt a little bit like poking through an artist's personal notebooks, the way words and images flow in and around each other. The art is beautiful to look at, but what was most remarkable to me was the way it harmonized with the story being told and elevated the narrative to something more intimate. There's also a lot of great asides about the science and the history surrounding the Curies and the far reaching effects of their research. A great book, recommended for lovers of art, science, history and good stories. ( )

what a lovely and interesting book learned things about the curies and radiation I din't know and got an introduction to cyanotype printing.
thought-provoking. ( )

I love the format of this book! The mixture of text and art along with history and commentary is really compelling.

The ratings are all over the place for this book for a good reason. One's opinion of it depends on whether one likes the mixture of art and text and whether one likes how the nonlinear nature of the text. The history of Marie Skłodowska Curie, Pierre Curie, family, and friends is linear. However, the author inserts relevant historical commentary throughout the story which is what many people object to.

As of this review date we assign this book to all of our General Chemistry I students as required reading and so far the feedback has been very positive. Students tend to like the format and while some don't like the nonlinear text, they appreciate the information.

I don't recommend the Kindle version, however. Some people bought it and said it was very hard to read. I suggest the hardback version and make it a coffee table book to encourage visitors to flip through it, ( )

Great story. Very interesting. Art sucked. ( )

[Radioactive] is a marvelous book. It's at once a biographical sketch of two pioneering researchers of radioactivity, a truly romantic love story, and a chilling history-of-the-science report. Presented through vibrantly colorful and lyrical, though curiously awkward, illustrations, Radioactive challenges the conventional image of the "Graphic Novel".

Marie and Pierre Curie—and their scientific work— are the subjects. Pierre Curie was born into science, son of a physician working in a neuroanatomical lab. He proved himself early and often, earning a university degree at 16, publishing a scientific paper at 21, and joining the Sorbonne's mineralogy lab to study crystals. Marya Sklodowska, on the other hand, was born into a working class Polish family living in Warsaw under Russian rule. A feature of early education included surprise interrogations by a state inspector who demanded students recite the names of Tzars and members of the imperial family. To get the education she wanted, she joined the Flying University, a clandestine network of a thousand women who met in secret and defied Russian control of education. Nevertheless, at 18, Marya took herself to Paris.

In 1891, the year 32-year-old Pierre began his doctoral dissertation ("Magnetic Properties of Bodies at Diverse Temperatures"), the 24-year-old Marya enrolled at the Sorbonne as Marie. She was one of only 23 female students among the total enrollment of 1800. Having completed degrees in mathematics and in physics in two years, she was hired by a national lab to study the magnetic properties of steel. She was working in borrowed space in a crowded lab until a Polish physicist visiting Paris introduced her to "a scientist of great merit": Pierre Curie. Thereafter, Marie reported on their introduction:

Upon entering the room I perceived, standing framed by the French window opening on the balcony, a tall young man with auburn hair and large, limpid eyes. I noticed the grave and gentle expression of his face, as well a certain abandon in his attitude, suggesting the dreamer absorbed in his reflections…We began a conversation which soon became friendly.

The two immediately began sharing lab space and research. Pierre persuaded Marie to marry him. They had a daughter and named her Irene. They collaborated in all ways, even keeping the same diary. Together they demonstrated the existence of two new elements, radium and polonium (the latter named for Marie's homeland, Poland). For this work, the Curies won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1902.

Radium is simultaneously mesmerizing and deadly. Both Marie and Pierre were captivated by its glow, and while aware of the hazard, they handled the material during long days in their lab. Marie slept with a tiny radium crumb in a vial beside her pillow. Ultimately, the exposure undermined Marie's health, delaying the Stockholm trip to accept the Prize for more than a year.

Marie and Pierre Curie's lives are presented in a straight chronology. But accounts of the dramatic, often terrible but occasional beneficial, impacts of their discoveries, often decades later, disrupt the timeline. The linkage is essential.

The book is entirely Redniss's. She organized the presentation, wrote the text. She laid out the pages. She created the illustrations, using a technique called "cyanoprinting". (The process is an old one and is used to make blueprints.) She added colors to the prints using paints or colored pencils. She even designed the typeface.

The artwork in Radioactive is unique. Not inspired by comic-strip conventions, it doesn't use the comic artist's vocabulary. Too, the book's design bends the conventions of story presentation. There's no grid, no uniform lineup of panels, each depicting an action, a phrase of dialog or a reaction or an emotion. Redniss may have used a grid to guide her layouts, but if she did, it is transparent. The art and the text blocks (which seldom are "blocks") flow across the spreads.

I first read Radioactive about 10 years ago. At the time, graphic novels were comics in the guise of books. Each page presented a grid of panels with cartoon figures and dialog balloons. Redniss's concept blew me away. It was—and still is, of course—a book aglow, perfectly fitting the topics.

It is quite unfortunate that images can't be shown in the reviews, for this is a GRAPHIC edition. Images are so important for anyone to get a satisfactory understanding of the book. Here's what I posted to my thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/342172#7856401