MARIE CURIE

By focusing on the shadows of the world in which Marie Curie lived, Fisher's (Kinderdike, 1994, etc.) striking black-and-white illustrations powerfully convey the obstacles that Curie faced even as she was being celebrated for her work on the discovery and isolation of pure radium. As the text explains with a quiet drama that pulls no punches, every step of the way Curie was denied what was rightly hers: As a child in Russian-occupied Poland, she was denied her heritage, and as a woman she was denied a slew of academic honors—including entrance into the French Academy of Science—even after she won the first of an unprecedented two Nobel Prizes. Right up to the end, Fisher refuses to condescend to his readers: After explaining her death by radium poisoning, Fisher states simply: ``Her aches and pains were no longer a mystery.'' The life of Marie Curie is riddled with so many ``firsts'' and is literally such a brilliant and explosive story that it would be difficult to create illustrations that do it justice, let alone add to it. Fisher succeeds. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 7-11)