The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening [Hardcover]

Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka shares his love of jazz great Sun Ra, just in time to mark the centennial of the musician’s birth.

Jazz musician Sun Ra (1914–1993) always said that he came from Saturn. Being from another planet, he was naturally intrigued by everything earthly — especially music, because music is the one thing on Earth most like the stars. Earthlings themselves confused Sun Ra, the way they sorted themselves by color and fought wars against one another. So he made music. And he traveled with other musicians and singers, calling themselves the Sun Ra Arkestra, playing, singing, and dancing for people all over the planet. Because music, he said, is what holds us all together. Join acclaimed author-illustrator Chris Raschka in celebrating a legend of the jazz world who was truly one of a kind.This tribute to the innovative jazz keyboardist and band leader synthesizes brilliant paintings with a narrative that strikes just the right chords for its audience. ... Incorporating musical notation sheets into luminous watercolor-and-ink pictures, Raschka repeats their horizontal lines in piano strings, library bookshelves, city blocks and the very rectangularity of many compositions. The joyful palette—yellow, red, blue-green, sienna—and wildly gestural black ink celebrate Sun Ra’s unique spirit. Unequivocally stellar.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A fantastical tribute. ... This is not the first time Raschka has captured jazz in imagery, and here his trademark loose gestural style is especially effective in reflecting both the subject’s untethered spirit and impenetrable persona. The images themselves are dense and dynamic, painted on a variety of textured papers and musical notation sheets and full of brilliant color and heavy black. ... In the end, readers get a bright, impressionistic portrait that follows its subject’s refusal to play by the rules.
—The Horn Book