Life was “just right” for Sofia and her two dads—but now, a new brother will soon arrive, and Sofia has lots of questions. Will her dads like the new child better? Does the new child even want a sister?
While she waits, she writes her brother a welcome letter about life in their family—what each dad likes to do and what they (and she) are good at. “You might get asked,” she also notes, “why we have … a Dad and a Daddy. We’re just lucky, I guess.”
Her parents love her, Sofia concludes, but they’ll also love you. Now, their family will again be “just right.”
Most of the text plays out as the illustrations show Sofia being picked up at school by one dad and rushing to the hospital to meet the other, who is already holding a baby in a birthing ward. It’s a lovely way of combining action and reflection without making the book itself too long. The illustrations are soft and soothing, but also gently humorous at times (for example, as Sofia helps one dad run through the pre-baby checklist).
The story does not indicate whether the family was formed via surrogacy or adoption (I’m tagging it for both); that makes it more broadly applicable, but does mean that the birthing parent is not part of this tale. You may therefore also wish to supplement All Our Love with Our Wish for You: A Story About Open Adoption or Before You Were You (about a family formed via surrogacy); neither is a story with siblings, but each includes more about the birthing parents.
All Our Love, however, helps fill a gap in picture-book representation of human LGBTQ families welcoming a new child after having (at least) one already. There have been only a very few previous ones that haven’t used animal analogies, as I’ve explained here. Happily, this is a delightful and recommended volume, with a protagonist who is both confident in herself and her family and understandably unsure about some aspects of their soon-to-change life.
One dad and the children are White; the other dad reads as a light-skinned person of color.
