Annette Bay Pimentel: I'm Annette Bay Pimentel and I wrote the picture book biography All the Way to the Top: How One Girl's Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything. Some laws that get passed barely make a ripple in my life, but some laws make deep and lasting changes. Every day I see and touch evidence of a law that passed in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA. That law said that public places must be accessible to all Americans, both with and without disabilities. It's why sidewalks have cutaway curves, why streaming movies give you the option of having subtitles, why you probably go to school with kids with disabilities, something that I certainly never did back in the years before the ADA.

I wanted kids to understand how the ADA has strengthened our society by giving more people the chance to study and work and participate in daily life. So I was looking for a non-boring way to write about a law. I remembered that there had been a big fight over whether Congress should pass the ADA when it was first proposed, so I went back and researched its history. That's when I found the story of Jennifer Keelan, an eight-year-old girl who demonstrated for the passage of the ADA. In the process, she ended up in newspapers all around the world. I realized that I could tell the story of the ADA and at the same time show the power that kids have to take action and nudge the world in new directions. But I also knew that I could only tell the story if Jennifer were on board. After all, it's her story. I reached out to her and she agreed to work with me. Ultimately, she ended up writing the foreword to the book and has toured with me to share the book with kids.

So now I'll share with you just a little of Jennifer's story. This is in the book when she was starting kindergarten and most schools wouldn't let her attend because she used a wheelchair:

Jennifer and her mom find a different school that says she can attend kindergarten, but only for part of the afternoon, when lunch is over. As Jennifer rolls in each day, everyone is already busy. She has to figure out what's going on and how to join in. Since most kids have never met someone who uses a wheelchair, her classmates are confused and even a little afraid.

"You'll never be one of us," some of them say. Jennifer knows they're wrong. She's just a friend waiting to happen!