Alyson Beecher over at Kid Lit Frenzy hosts a Non-fiction Picture Book Challenge and has a roundup every Wednesday. I love the encouragement to explore more non-fiction.
This week I finally got to read The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra by Chris Raschka. Wow! Sun Ra, or Herman Poole Blount as he was named at birth, was a very interesting individual. This picture book biography is a great blending of music, art, and facts about an imaginative and creative man. I was glad to find some recordings of his music online. Jazz was inventive and left a lot of room for experimentation. Sun Ra was all over that. Listen and observe in the trailer below.
I was happy to find this great article/author interview over at the Smithsonian website. I'm looking forward to sharing this bright and interesting biography with students and the art teacher.
