Uncle Bobby's Wedding

by Sarah S. Brannen, Lucia Soto (Illustrator)

Overview

Chloe's favorite uncle is getting married, and she's not happy about it. But after a magical day with Uncle Bobby and his boyfriend, Jamie, Chloe realizes she's not losing an uncle, but gaining one. Selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best picture books of 2020 and by the American Library Association as a 2021 Rainbow Book List title, celebrate family with this gorgeous picture book.

Featured on Bank Street's Best Books of the Year list.

"A joyous, heartwarming, sweet-and essential-update." Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

"Those we love, [Soto] and Brannen show, needn't change just because they love someone else, too-there's plenty of room in the human heart." Publishers Weekly

"A large-hearted affirmation of society's newest kind of wedding." Booklist

"Valiant, valid, validating, valuable." Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

"With warm, richly colored, and expressive illustrations by Lucia Soto, the book, published in partnership with GLAAD, serves as a gentle and welcome celebration of the different shapes love and family can take." Boston Globe

When Chloe's favorite uncle announces that he's getting married, everyone is excited. Everyone except Chloe, that is. What if Uncle Bobby no longer has time for picnics, swimming, or flying kites? Chloe just wants to keep having fun with her favorite uncle, but she's afraid everything is going to change. Can Uncle Bobby and his boyfriend Jamie show Chloe that when it comes to family, the more the merrier? In this inspiring, love-filled story, Chloe learns that she's not losing an uncle . . . she's gaining one.

Originally published in 2008 and re-imagined in 2020, Uncle Bobby's Wedding is one of the most important picture books to center the lives of LGBTQ families. In 2025, Uncle Bobby's Wedding was featured prominently in the controversial and often criticized Supreme Court of the United States case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, where this charming story about a girl and her favorite doting uncle made huge waves.

Produced in partnership with GLAAD, Uncle Bobby's Wedding is a loving celebration of a caring and thoughtful family who help a child realize that change can be good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781499817416
Publisher:	little bee books
Publication date:	04/07/2026
Series:	Uncle Bobby
Pages:	26
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.53(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

Sarah S. Brannen received her AB in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Pennsylvania. Uncle Bobby's Wedding is her first book for children. She lives in Massachusetts.

What People are Saying About This

Robert Sabuda

"...Sarah Brannen's beautiful and moving tale has arrived just in time for the young, twenty-first century reader."--(Robert Sabuda, bestselling pop-up artist)

Gregory Maguire

"Valiant, valid, validating, valuable."--(Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked)

Tomie de Paola

"This is SUCH a lovely, charming book. It's about time."--(Tomie de Paola, Newbery Honor-winning author of 26 Fairmont Avenue)

Jane Langton

"...Story and pictures are gentle and serene rather than controversial."--(Jane Langton, Newbery Honor-winning author of The Fledgling)

Jacqueline Woodson

"I love it. It's a beautiful book that needs no explaining."--(Jacqueline Woodson, Newbery Honor-winning author of Show Way)

Editorial Reviews

A modest, affable look at jealousy and reassurance. Chloe's very attached to her uncle; they take walks together, go rowing on the river and "Once they even climbed to the top of a lighthouse." But suddenly, at a family picnic, Uncle Bobby announces that he's getting married. Mama whoops and hugs; Daddy shakes hands; everyone's overjoyed-except Chloe. "I . . . don't think you should get married. You have ME!" Jamie, the fiance, must win her over. In an ice-cream parlor after a ballet, he imitates the dancers until "Chloe laughed so hard, she got soda up her nose." Jamie's delicate yet hilarious ballet position is definitely endearing. Brannen's pencil-and-watercolor guinea pigs, the males dressed a la Donald Duck (shirts, no pants), are pleasant and unassuming. Humor comes secondary to Chloe's fear of displacement, but the fact of two men marrying is a refreshing nonissue here. At the festive wedding, Chloe declares, "I planned it all from the beginning," as she realizes that she isn't losing an uncle, she's gaining one. (Picture book. 2-6)

Kirkus Reviews

Uncle Bobby is getting married-but his niece Chloe doesn't know if that is a good idea. When Uncle Bobby announces at the first picnic of the summer that he and "his friend, Jamie," are getting married, everyone is happy except Chloe. When she expresses her concern to her mother, Mom says she should talk to Uncle Bobby, who reassures Chloe that they will still have plenty of fun together-and then sets out to prove it. Bobby and Jamie take Chloe to the ballet and joke afterward at a soda shop. They go sailing, and Jamie is the first to jump in when Chloe tumbles out of the boat. Roasting marshmallows over a campfire, Chloe happily says, "I wish both of you were my uncles"-and of course they tell her she will get that wish. Flower girl Chloe helps out at the wedding, and they all dance the night away. Brannen reworks the text of her out-of-print and oft-challenged 2008 title to good effect. The tale of a child's uncertainty and jealousy at her uncle's wedding someone who just happens to be another man and the family's carefree celebration of that union remains essentially the same. Soto's bright, friendly cartoons, however, depict a diverse human cast-Uncle Bobby presents white and Jamie presents black-representing a quantum leap forward over the original's anthropomorphic guinea pigs. Chloe has light beige skin; her mother presents white, and her father's skin is a shade darker than Chloe's.
A joyous, heartwarming, sweet-and essential-update.

STARRED REVIEW Kirkus Reviews

This reissue of Brannen's 2008 story features virtually identical text, but its sprightly new illustrations offer one big difference: the characters are human this time around (they were guinea pigs in the original). Otherwise the story of a same-sex wedding is the same. Bobby remains little Chloe's favorite uncle, and she is once again distressed when he announces he is marrying his friend Jamie-not because Jamie is a man, but because Chloe wants to keep having fun with Uncle Bobby. Happily, when Jamie joins them in their times together, the fun is only enhanced, and soon Chloe is wishing both men could be her uncle. She is elated, therefore, when Jamie explains that after he and Bobby are married, she will have two uncles. The wedding goes off with only a few humorous glitches, and when it is over, Chloe pronounces it the best wedding ever. And so it is. Not as groundbreaking as its first incarnation, yet this new, more realistic version nevertheless remains a large-hearted affirmation of society's newest kind of wedding.

Booklist

In this reworking of a 2008 title, now published in partnership with GLAAD, everyone in the family is happy that Uncle Bobby and his "friend" Jamie are getting married, with one exception: Chloe worries that the marriage will make her uncle less present in her life. But Uncle Bobby handles this sense of displacement like a pro: he invites Chloe to go on outings with him and Jamie, and soon Chloe realizes that Jamie is a lot of fun-after a trip to the ballet, "Jamie imitated the ballet dancers and Chloe laughed so hard, she got soda up her nose"-and that two uncles might be better than one. From the announcement picnic to the lively wedding (with Chloe as a yellow-clad flower girl), illustrator Soto's inclusive cartooned characters are attentive and affectionate in a way that feels genuine. Those we love, she and Brannen show, needn't change just because they love someone else, too-there's plenty of room in the human heart.

Publishers Weekly

In Sarah S. Brannen's new picture book, her 20th, "Uncle Bobby's Wedding" (Little Bee), Chloe fears that her favorite uncle getting married means the end of their adventures together, that she'll lose her kite-flying partner, and her pal at picnics. What Bobby and his soon-to-be-husband show Chloe is that there's room enough for all kinds of love, and that loving a new person doesn't mean there's less room for other love. With warm, richly colored, and expressive illustrations by Lucia Soto, the book, published in partnership with GLAAD, serves as a gentle and welcome celebration of the different shapes love and family can take.

Boston Globe