For Ages
8 to 12

An Excerpt fromSnow and Rose

Once, there were two sisters.
Rose had hair like threads of black silk and cheeks like two red petals and a voice that was gentle and sometimes hard to hear. Snow had hair like white swan down and eyes the color of the winter sky, with a laugh that was sudden and wild.
They lived in a cottage in the woods, but it hadn’t always been so. “Tell me a story,” Snow called in the dark. She moved restlessly, wide awake in her bed.
“You’ll wake Mama,” Rose murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
Snow sat up, her bed creaking. “Rose?” Her whisper drifted in the dark. “Please?”
Their bedroom was a loft that lay above the hearth and kitchen and below a pointed ceiling. On one side were the sisters’ beds. On the other side was their mother’s bed. Rose peered through the gap in the faded screen that turned one small room into two very tiny ones. The blue light in the window showed the curve of their mother’s…