Beautiful Noise - The Music of John Cage
Publication date: October 10 2023
AWARDS
American Illustration 42
Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Selected for a Notable Book in the Boston Authors Club 2023
Review
Na's whimsical illustrations vibrantly convey the cacophony present in many Cage compositions. Employing a vocabulary of images (squiggles, slashes, lines) representing sounds and emotions identified on the endpapers, Na clearly represents the unique and experimental nature of Cage's work.
-Booklist (Starred review)
Illustrations take one sensory experience (sound) and represent it in another (sight) in stunning ways. Bursts of bright colors, shapes, and lines that represent Cage’s music are overlaid onto people, landscapes, and interiors, which are primarily rendered in black, white, and gray; at other times the colorful music peeks through windows or floats in the air, transforming dull backdrops into colorful, riotous expressions that disrupt a stodgy world.
-The Horn Book (Starred Review)
Na exhibits sound through vibrant colors and bold shapes against line art backgrounds, varying the style of each spread and increasingly warping the flat perspective as Cage experiments, fittingly representing his inventive music and spirit.
-Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)
”A great introduction to a composer who was a disruptor and pioneer; this is a solid addition to school libraries and music departments.”
-school library journal
