Blanca & Roja

by Anna-Marie McLemore

Overview

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 a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan.

But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans’ spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them.

Blanca & Roja is the captivating story of sisters, friendship, love, hatred, and the price we pay to protect our hearts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250211637
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	527,282
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Anna-Marie McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. She is the author of Morris Award Finalist The Weight of Feathers, the Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature, and Wild Beauty.

Editorial Reviews

"McLemore weaves in powerful themes of identity, family, and first love, but there are also much-needed messages about overcoming hurtful stereotypes and expectations. McLemore's poignant retelling is a must-read for fans of fantasy and fairy tales." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Any fan of McLemore’s body of work, Bone Gap by Laura Ruby, or Malinda Lo’s fantasy will revel in this novel. A magical and lovely first purchase for all YA shelves." —School Library Journal, starred review

"McLemore is at her finest; she twines Latino folklore through the fairytales of Swan Lake and Snow White & Rose Red to create a story that is wholly original... [McLemore] offers up something that's vibrant, wondrously strange, and filled to the brim with love of all kinds. —Booklist, starred review

"One of the most beautiful books I've ever read, bright with hope and brimming with love. Powerful and unforgettable, this mesmerizing fairy tale made my heart ache and my spirit soar." —Claire Legrand, author of Furyborn

"McLemore's novel weaves an unforgettable story about the bond between sisters and the daring to rewrite your destiny." —Zoraida Córdova, author of Bruja Born

“Mesmerizing and absolutely beautiful. McLemore has created a fairy tale for the modern age." —April Tucholke, author of Wink Poppy Midnight

“Some authors write amazing characters. Some authors are beautifully atmospheric. Anna-Marie McLemore is the rare author that combines both skills…This story swallowed me into itself until I felt the aches of every character as deeply as my own.” —Amanda Quain, One More Page Books

Praise for The Weight of Feathers

Morris Award Finalist

“A gripping, beautifully rendered story with prose reminiscent of Eva Luna and a fantastical world as captivating as that of The Night Circus.” —Sabaa Tahir, author of An Ember in the Ashes

“Ethereal and beguiling.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

…enchanting…Though it's full of enchantments, what mostly makes Blanca & Roja magical is not the spells that animate the plot but the bond of sisterhood that brings to life Blanca and Roja's struggle. This is more than a story about girls who are threatened with being turned into swans—it is about unwavering loyalty to family, and the hurt that comes when that bond seems betrayed. But what elevates Blanca & Roja from a good adaptation to a brilliant one is not just how the book reinvents its source material—it's the ideas that McLemore layers on top of it: her own exploration of sisterhood, identity, the yearning to be seen that we all feel and the question of how we protect the things we love most.

The New York Times Book Review - MJ Franklin

08/27/2018
McLemore (Wild Beauty) offers another lushly written fairy tale retelling, this time intermingling hints of “Snow White” with “Swan Lake” and other classic tales of girls turned into swans. Devoted sisters Blanca and Roja are as different physically as siblings can be. Roja has hair as dark as “coffee grounds, but red... a red so dark it looked wet” and skin “as brown as the almond’s skin”; Blanca’s skin is pale, her hair “as fine and blond as a duckling’s down.” They grow up under a curse: in each generation of sisters, swans take one sister during the bloom of adolescence to become a swan for life. Rather than turn the sisters into rivals, McLemore tells a love story between siblings reticent to betray the other, both equally determined to outsmart the curse and the eager swans along with it. Two additional protagonists populate the novel: Barclay, a blue-eyed boy who becomes a bear by a different name and falls for Roja, and Page, a gender-non- binary teen who turns into a cygnet and grows captivated with Blanca. The four protagonists’ family drama and secrets help to compel the narrative forward in this twisty, allusive story. Ages 13–up. Agent: Taylor Martindale Kean, Full Circle Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/01/2018
Gr 8 Up—Magical realism extraordinaire McLemore crafts a queer, Latinx mash-up of "Snow White," "Wild Swans," and Swan Lake told from four perspectives. Blanca and Roja del Cisne are sisters, destined to be ripped apart by a curse that will turn one of them into a swan. Enter a blue-eyed boy named Yearling, who can turn into a bear, along with his best friend Page, who is sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, sometimes in-between. Real-world problems of small-town life, family betrayal, and developing crushes among the quartet are entangled with the very eminent danger of the curse of the swans. Reflective dialogue among and in the minds of each character results in meandering action. The expansive, magical tone of McLemore's writing leaves readers invested not just in the multidimensional characters' stories, but in their own unfolding paths and questions about identity. Colorism within the Latinx community and nonbinary gender representation are adeptly explored in McLemore's prose with nuance. The most magical element of this fairy tale is the focus on very real identities and how they intersect. The chapter endings of the four alternating perspectives sometimes abruptly tug readers from one thread to another. Any fan of McLemore's body of work, Bone Gap by Laura Ruby, or Malinda Lo's fantasy will revel in this novel. VERDICT A magical and lovely first purchase for all YA shelves.—Angela Wiley, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

School Library Journal

★ 2018-07-30

Sisters Blanca and Roja attempt to escape their family curse in this mashup of "Snow-White and Rose-Red" and Swan Lake.

As long as anyone in the Latinx del Cisne ("of the swans") family can remember, there have always been two daughters: One is destined to be transformed into a swan shortly after the younger sister's 15th birthday, while the other is left behind to live as a human. Fiery, darker-skinned, redheaded 15-year-old Roja has always believed she's the one the swans will claim, while kind, fair-skinned, golden-haired, 17-year-old Blanca has always promised Roja they would do everything to fight the curse. Despite being considered opposites, the sisters share a seemingly unbreakable bond that's tested when two missing local high school boys reappear in the woods near their home as a cygnet and a bear. White best friends Yearling, a boy from a rich but toxic family, and Page, a trans boy whose family are apple farmers, hide in the del Cisne home after returning to their human bodies. As love blossoms between the sisters and the best friends, they attempt to avoid a heartbreaking destiny. As with her other stories, McLemore (Wild Beauty, 2017, etc.) weaves in powerful themes of identity, family, and first love, but there are also much-needed messages about overcoming hurtful stereotypes and expectations.

McLemore's poignant retelling is a must-read for fans of fantasy and fairy tales. (author's note) (Fantasy. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews