Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium

Marie Curie's story has fascinated and inspired young readers
decades. The poor Polish girl who worked eight years to be able
to afford to attend the Sorbonne in Paris became one of the
most important scientists of her day, winning not one but two
Nobel Prizes. Her life is a fascinating one, filled with hard work,
humanitarianism, and tragedy. Her work with her husband,
Pierre - the study of radioactivity and the discovery of the
elements radium and polonium - changed science forever. But
she is less well known for her selfless efforts during World War
to establish mobile X-ray units so that wounded French soldiers
could get better care faster. When she stood to profit greatly
from her scientific work, she chose not to, making her methods
and findings known and available to all of science. As a result,
this famous woman spent most of her life in need of money,
often to buy the very elements she discovered.

Marie Curie's life and work are given a fresh telling, one that
also explores the larger picture of the effects of radium in world
culture, and its exploitation and sad misuse.

Carla Killough McClafferty grew up on an agricultural farm near England, Arkansas. "My elementary school didn't even have a library. Bookshelves underneath the windows that spanned one side of each classroom were the substitutes. To this day, libraries inspire me with awe and appreciation. I always loved to read, but it never occurred to me as a child that I would become a writer. As a matter of fact, I have no background or training to be a writer.

"After high school I graduated from Baptist Medical Center School of Radiologic Technology in Little Rock, then worked in local hospitals. After my children were born, I was a stay-at-home mom except for occasional freelance work as a radiologic technologist in orthopedic clinics.

"I began writing after the death of my fourteen-month-old son, Corey, which left me struggling to answer impossible questions like 'Why did this have to happen?' I wrote a book about how God brought me through this difficult period in my life titled Forgiving God (Discovery House, 1995). I found through that experience that I loved to write and have been writing ever since."

Ms. McClafferty's first book of nonfiction for children is The Head Bone's Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky, and Wonderful X-ray. Through an engaging text and numerous photographs, McClafferty tells the history of the X-ray, from its discovery to its applications today, covering such things as the use of X-rays to study art, Egyptian mummies, astronomy, and paleontology, just to name a few. In manuscript form, The Head Bone's Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky, and Wonderful X-ray won the 1997 Work-in-Progress Grant from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

In Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium, Ms. McClafferty gives the scientist's life and work a fresh telling, one that also explores the larger picture of the effects of radium in world culture, and its exploitation and sad misuse. Kirkus Reviews says the book "gives readers a terrific sense of Curie's state of mind as she worked and loved. There are many biographies of Curie; this one stands out in its shared focus on her discovery and its legacy."

Ms. McClafferty is a frequent speaker at church, writers', teachers' and school groups. She lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband Pat. They have three children, Ryan, Brittney and the late Corey McClafferty.