Tonia and her mother have emigrated from Poland to start a new life in North America. One day, after Tonia comes home upset from school, her mother consoles her with a story about a Polish woman who was once just like Tonia.

This is the starting point for Wishinsky’s picture book biography of scientist Manya Sklodowska, better known to the world as Marie Curie. Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered radium and polonium. In 1903 they won the Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1911, Marie won the prize again, this time for Chemistry. During World War I she fitted vehicles with X-ray machines and learned to drive them so that she could visit the front lines to run the machines and train others to do so. The use of X-ray equipment during the war resulted in quick diagnoses of injuries and saved many lives.

Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, the first person to receive the prize twice, and the first Nobel winner to have a daughter win it. Manya’s Dream is a detailed, well-written and thoroughly researched book that should inspire girls interested in pursuing scientific careers. mRb