The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor / by Ken Silverstein: A Narrative Science Title for High School

Bibliographic Data: Silverstein, K. (2004). The radioactive boy scout: The true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor. New York: Random House.

Plot Description:  This is the true story of David Hahn, a young boy who builds a nuclear reactor in his backyard shed in the Detroit suburbs. From the publisher: "While [David] was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller."

Quantitative Reading Level: Lexile Level: 1300L

Qualitative Reading Analysis: Written by journalist Ken Silverstein, this book is written in fluid, natural  language, sure to grab high school readers' attention. While the knowledge demands of scientific terminology and science history are best suited for upper grades, its narrative format still has the potential for teacher-guided reading for younger students in high school or even middle school. This is perhaps due to the journalistic tone, which defines and contextualizes these complex ideas for the reader. The author as first person narrator sets the story in its historical context and jumps between the story's events and the larger scientific/historical picture, clearly navigating between the two and preventing confusion. A table of contents lists each of the eight titles and subtitles, each chapter being approximately 20 pages long. The font is a readable medium point serif, with pages consisting of single spaced paragraphs surrounded by one inch margins. Notes for each chapter are listed in the back of the book for further reading of primary and secondary sources. Interesting descriptions of how nuclear science works, the history of radium use in the U.S., and descriptions of Superfund and the law enforcement response to David Hahn's backyard experiment will captivate high school readers and adults alike.

Content Area: Science, reading

Content Area Standard: CCSS for English Language Arts for Grades 11-12

3.Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters/archetypes are introduced and developed).

5.Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

CCSS Reading Standards for Informational Text for Grades 11-12

2. Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.

3. Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

5. Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.

Curriculum Suggestions: This book would make an entertaining and informative introduction to either a nuclear science unit or a science history unit. The story focuses on a boy scout, thus providing a peer character for students to relate. Relevant assignments for this book could center on gifted children, science ethics, and could be paired with the similar nonfiction title, The Boy Who Played with Fusion.

Links to Supporting Digital Content: 

Season 6, Episode 6 of the Travel Channel's Mysteries at the Museum features the story of the "Radioactive Boy scout".

Editorial Reviews:
“Amazing . . . unsettling . . . should come with a warning: Don’t buy [this book] for any obsessive kids in the family. It might give them ideas.”

–Rocky Mountain News
“An astounding story . . . [Silverstein] has a novelist’s eye for meaningful detail and a historian’s touch for context.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune“Alarming . . . The story fascinates from start to finish.”
–Outside
“Enthralling . . . [It] has the quirky pleasures of a Don DeLillo novel or an Errol Morris documentary. . . . An engaging portrait of a person whose life on America’s fringe also says something about mainstream America.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune
“[Silverstein] does a fabulous job of letting David [Hahn’s] surrealistic story tell itself. . . . But what’s truly amazing is how far Hahn actually got in the construction of his crude nuclear reactor.”
–The Columbus Dispatch