Why am I passionate about this?
Fairy tales are some of my favorite stories: each time we touch them, we change them. Before we began writing them down, fairy tales were passed from speaker to listener, always changing with the teller, the audience, the culture. I’m fascinated by how often we revisit them, by what we change, and what we decide to keep. I think there are as many ways to tell a story as there are folks who are interested in telling it, and I like to see what authors and illustrators will cook up from our communal pot of stories.
Elizabeth's book list on queer fairy tale retellings for teens
Why did Elizabeth love this book?
Anna-Marie McLemore’s prose is so poetic and elegant that I sometimes reread sentences just because they have such a beautiful cadence to them.
This book is a reimagining of “Snow White and Rose-Red” with elements of Swan Lake and Latinx folklore.
Everything McLemore writes is magic, but this story weaves together everything I love about their work: magical realism, velvety descriptions, and fairy tales cracked open in new ways to shed light on racial and gender politics.
I love the complicated, loving relationship between the two sisters, and I love that the boy Blanca falls in love with has a complicated relationship with gender that is in part inspired by McLemore’s transgender and non-binary husband.
1 author picked Blanca & Roja as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.
Award-winning author Anna-Marie McLemore retells Swan Lake in this spellbinding YA story of sisters who are each other's best friends―and worst enemies.
The biggest lie of all is the story you think you already know.
The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca is as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them…