Fight to Build a Better Bridge: Change Sings by Amanda Gorman

A little girl with an enormous guitar begins it all, playing and singing, as she walks along the sidewalk (with a wall mural of Martin Luther King as her backdrop), and as she marches along, other young musicians join the the band--a small boy in a yarmulka joins her in cleaning up broken bottles and cans before he picks up his huge Sousaphone and plays with her. The two bring food to a homeless mother and child and a lonely woman with her walker, and recruit a trumpet player along the way.

Seeing a small girl isolated high on her porch, the young musicians help build her a ramp so she can join them with her drum.

I DON'T MAKE A TALLER FENCE.

BUT FIGHT TO BUILD A BETTER BRIDGE.

A young trombonist is recruited as the little band helps storekeepers along the way as they pass, and a very small girl adds her tiny tambourine.

WE KNOW IT WON'T BE LONG.

WON'T YOU SING ALONG?

In Amanda Gorman's latest plea for social change, Change Sings: A Children's Anthem (Viking Books, 2021), the author says she "takes a knee to make a stand."

In beautiful illustrations by the award-winning artist Loren Long, the creator of the inspiring young steer in the much-loved stories about farm adventures, Otis, and sequels, and Barack Obama's Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters,

The New York Time's top-selling illustrator adds gloriously glowing illustrations to join author Amanda Gordon, America's National Youth Poet Laureate.

Says Kirkus in a starred review, "Text and poetry work together to regulate a careful reading of this beautiful work. One to keep, to read, and to reread.”