In Chairs to Mend, a young girl brings a folk song to life after listening to street cries in her 1880s Boston neighborhood. Today, this is a song used in many elementary music classes to teach the expansion of cultural traditions. After years of telling this story to her students, author Sue McCallum Melton wrote Chairs to Mend to help readers learn the song, understand the origins, and encourage their own creativity. The word-for-word narration on the accompanying CD uses a variety of singing voices and provides a good vocal model for healthy singing. Any reader will know and be able to sing "Chairs to Mend" after experiencing the book and CD together.

Sue McCallum Melton has been an elementary music teacher for twenty-two years. She has taught In Plano Independent School District in Plano, Texas, for the last eighteen years. Sue underwent Kodály training and earned a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Music Education from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She holds membership in MENC, TMEA, OAKE, and AOSA.