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 just what family means.

Produced in coordination with GLAAD, this adorable picture book is a positive example of same-sex marriage and a celebration of family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781499810080
Publisher:	little bee books
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Series:	Uncle Bobby
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	394,464
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	3 - 6 Years

About the Author

Sarah Brannen is an award-winning author and illustrator of more than twenty books for children, including Bear Needs Help, Madame Martine, Seashells: More Than a Home, and Feathers: Not Just for Flying. She also illustrated the 40th-anniversary edition of All Kinds of Families by Norma Simon. Sarah lives in Massachusetts. Learn more at sarahbrannen.com.

Lucia Soto is an illustrator and graphic designer who loves Julie London and Art Deco, and is afraid of pigeons. After working as an art director in advertising, Lucia decided to set up her own studio and make beautiful art. Uncle Bobby's Wedding is her debut picture book. She lives with her husband and their tiny apple tree in London, England. luciasoto.com

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

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 Sudbury-based children's book writer 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

★ 2020-02-26
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. (Picture book. 2-9)

Kirkus Reviews

Brannen's debut stars a strong-willed guinea pig whose favorite uncle announces he is marrying his partner, Jamie. Everyone is thrilled except for Chloe, who tells Uncle Bobby that she doesn't think he should get married, since "You have me! We can keep having fun together, like always." Her uncle promises, "You'll always be my Chloe," and tells her they will continue to have fun together. He and Jamie escort Chloe to the ballet and take her sailing, and she warms to the idea of having two uncles, especially when she is asked to be their flower girl. She proclaims the garden ceremony "the best wedding ever"-and even takes credit for planning it. Though the story makes an easy springboard for adult-child dialogue, the issue of same-sex marriage is incidental to the plot, which straightforwardly addresses the fear of being replaced when a loved one marries. Featuring a sunny palette, Brannen's delicately outlined watercolors convey the characters' varied emotions-the guinea pigs' eyes are particularly expressive-and the mutual affection of the heroine and her uncle. The final scene, which depicts Chloe between her uncles in the light of a full moon, underscores Brannen's reassuring message. Ages 4-up. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 2- This is a spare story about Chloe, a young guinea pig who is jealous of her Uncle Bobby's new friend, Jamie; however, that obscures the other main theme, which is that her favorite uncle is going to marry him. Everything happens too abruptly. Readers and Chloe meet him for the first time on the day that Bobby announces, "We're getting married." It seems likely that a special niece would have already met the man her uncle loves enough to wed. Michael Willhoite's Daddy's Wedding (Alyson Wonderland, 1996) introduces same-sex marriage adroitly when a little boy asks one obvious question, "Can men get married to each other?" The boy is reassured with an affirmative response. Chloe neither asks nor gets a direct answer; instead, her mother tells her that people who love each other "want to be married." The watercolor-and-graphite illustrations are sweet and tender. One scene shows Chloe, Uncle Bobby, and Jamie sitting on the floor roasting marshmallows at a fireplace. While the cover shows the two males dressed in formal clothing, the use of animal characters and a name common for both males and females may confuse and delay some children's comprehension. The themes of jealousy and gay relationships are introduced naturally in Pija Lindenbaum's Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle (Farrar, 2007).-Kirsten Cutler, Sonoma County Library, CA

School Library Journal