YouTube creators, musicians, and husbands Sam Tsui and Casey Breves take readers on a joyful, rhyming exploration of the titular question, following a protagonist family of a young, overall-clad girl and her two dads.
We sing because we’re happy; to feel strong; for a sense of belonging; to express love; or to entertain, they tell us, as each spread reveals a new scene and a new reason to sing. Other characters take the foreground, showcasing these ideas, as the main family sings along. Songs can reflect history and heritage, we see; we can sing at parties, at prayer, and “even in the shower!” Songs can be for fun, but also “speak truth to power” (as we see with the image of a protest march). Every song is important, however, the text asserts, and the book ends with the family turning to the reader and asking, “What will YOU sing?”
A cheerful book about the many ways of using one’s voice, with the fact that this is a two-dad family happily incidental to the tale.
The girl is Black, her dads are White, and other characters reflect a wide range of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities.
Tsui and Breves have also created a children’s music album, Why Do We Sing?, as “the official soundtrack” for the book. There is nothing LGBTQ-specific about any of the songs, so I am not going to give the album a separate entry in this database, but I will note that it’s fun, slickly produced, and feels equally inspired by Disney soundtracks and Broadway. If you like either, you’ll probably like this. You can find it on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music, and probably other streaming services.
