All Our Love

Adding a sibling into any family is a monumental shift for children. Suddenly, the dynamics, the timing, and the elegant family dance we all create are all scrambled around. In All Our Love, Kari-Lynn Winters and Scot Ritchie create a simple story of a family expecting a new baby and one older sister who is lucidly wrangling what it will mean for her to step into that role.

Perhaps one of the most piercing questions our narrator Sofia (soon-to-be-older-sister) asks is, “Will they like you better than me?” Winters is spot on in voicing that universal older sibling worry. The book takes readers along in the voice of a letter Sofia is crafting for the new baby, highlighting what is special about her family. She covers information about herself (“You’ll see that I keep everyone organized.”) as well as her father’s (“You’ll see that Dad loves music […] He makes pancakes for dinner on Tuesdays […]”). Ultimately, All Our Love is a sensitive and well-paced book about one little girl awaiting her sibling.

I felt that Ritchie’s loose lines and semi-saturated tones were a perfect complement to Winters’ text. The details in the images are just cartoon-like enough to provide readers a safe distance from the subject at hand in order to better consider their own feelings in relation to Sofia’s. All Our Love will be helpful in any primary classroom where family structures remain an important part of the social studies curriculum. I’d be remiss not to note that the family’s visit to the hospital involves masking, such an intelligent inclusion in a book aimed at readers who were likely born with masking protocols in place.