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24th out of 919 books
—
5,210 voters
Briar Rose (Fairy Tale)
by
Jane Yolen
A powerful retelling of Sleeping Beauty that is "heartbreaking and heartwarming."
An American Library Association "100 Best Books for Teens"
An American Library Association "Best Books for Young Adults"
Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her grandmother Gemma's stories about Briar Rose. But a promise Rebecca makes to her dying grandmother will lead her...more
An American Library Association "100 Best Books for Teens"
An American Library Association "Best Books for Young Adults"
Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her grandmother Gemma's stories about Briar Rose. But a promise Rebecca makes to her dying grandmother will lead her...more
Paperback, 239 pages
Published
March 15th 2002
by Tor Teen
(first published August 31st 1988)
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Becca has grown up hearing her grandmother (called "Gemma" because one of her granddaughters couldn't pronounce "grandma") tell the story of Sleeping Beauty to her and her sisters. Gemma's story is different from the widely-known version, however - in this one, Briar Rose has red hair (like Gemma) and lives in a castle where everyone falls asleep after an evil fairy sends a mist over everyone. When the prince comes to the castle, he kisses Sleeping Beauty, but she is the only one who wakes up.
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I have always loved fairy tales, and their retellings, ever since I got my hands on a complete collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales. So I was excited to find this retelling of Sleeping Beauty that is, of all things, also a Holocaust story. Becca is the 3rd daughter (third--very important in fairy tales...)of a Jewish family, whose grandmother, known to them as Gemma, has slipped into senility and finally dies. On her deathbed, Gemma makes Becca promise to track down her inheritance--the truth--of t...more
Jan 04, 2008
Natalie
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Those interested in the holocaust over 14 or so
If you picked up this book thinking it was a fantasy/modern fairytale, you will be disappointed. There is NO fantasy, magic, magical creatures, alternate realities etc in this book. In fact, I almost didn't finish it because it seemed like a pretty standard piece of fluff for over half the book.
I am glad that I did finish it, though. The only reason I did was because I decided to look up some reviews to see what the deal was. I found this book looking for retelling of fairytales/fantasy type bo...more
I am glad that I did finish it, though. The only reason I did was because I decided to look up some reviews to see what the deal was. I found this book looking for retelling of fairytales/fantasy type bo...more
Great read!! I read it in one sitting. The story of Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) linked to the Holocaust. Rebecca Berlin, a young woman who has grown up hearing her grandmother, Gemma, tell an unusual and scary version of the Sleeping Beauty legend, realizes when Gemma dies that the fairy tale offers one of the very few clues she has to her grandmother's past. Rebecca travels to Poland, to discover the facts behind Gemma's story. My only concern is that I think it would be difficult for YAs to r...more
Sabrina Smith
Traditional Literature
In this retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Yolen melds it together with a Holocaust story. The result is fascinating and compelling, though the magic is dampened a bit by the heavier subject matter.
When Rebecca is left a box of mysterious items by her grandmother, she searches for her grandmother’s real identity and history, and why she claimed to be Briar Rose, the character from the tale she told her granddaughters repeatedly.
Chapters alternate between present t...more
Traditional Literature
In this retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Yolen melds it together with a Holocaust story. The result is fascinating and compelling, though the magic is dampened a bit by the heavier subject matter.
When Rebecca is left a box of mysterious items by her grandmother, she searches for her grandmother’s real identity and history, and why she claimed to be Briar Rose, the character from the tale she told her granddaughters repeatedly.
Chapters alternate between present t...more
You can always depend on Jane Yolen for excellent writing, but this is my absolute favorite of hers. She manages to combine the Holocaust, the Sleeping Beauty tale, and a young woman's memories of her grandmother into a really wonderful book. Very highly recommended.
This novel retells a segment of the holocaust through the lens of a family story masquerading as a fairy tale. This device was interesting and ambitious, but it fell flat. I had a little trouble determine the intended audience for this book. The viewpoint character is a young woman, a recent college graduate still living at home. (At one point, we are gratuitously informed that she had watched one of the soft porn movies on late night tv.) But the simplicity of the language suggested a younger r...more
Dec 10, 2012
trisprior
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone who is interested in historic fiction, or wants to learn more about the holocaust
This book uses the story of Briar Rose as a metaphor and there is no magical element at all.
Jane Yolen has done an amazing job at connecting the classic fairytale ideas of good and evil with real history, and creating this haunting retelling of sleeping beauty. Briar Rose is a reminder of a time period that we all want to forget about.
When i first saw this book on a friend's bookshelf a few years ago, i was compelled to read it, and borrowed it from her.
It sat on my bookshelf for about 2 1/2 y...more
Jane Yolen has done an amazing job at connecting the classic fairytale ideas of good and evil with real history, and creating this haunting retelling of sleeping beauty. Briar Rose is a reminder of a time period that we all want to forget about.
When i first saw this book on a friend's bookshelf a few years ago, i was compelled to read it, and borrowed it from her.
It sat on my bookshelf for about 2 1/2 y...more
So had you asked me, friends, to tell you the story of Sleeping Beauty—the real story, not the one that Disney had girlified—I would have tried to patch together some half-remembered Grimm’s Fairy Tale, maybe with a bit of the original French story thrown in. I also would have included the details that the bad fairy had silver eagles in her hair, and that the prince, when he tried to break through the wall of thorns surrounding the castle, was sung to by the ghosts of people who had tried to get...more
Mar 09, 2011
{eri}
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people interested in the Holocaust
Recommended to {eri} by:
GoodReads
Shelves:
princess
This book was fantastic! I knew right of the bat I was going to like it, just by the way it was written and the characters developed. The story begins with a grandmother (called Gemma because her granddaughters couldn't pronounce 'grandma') telling for what we can tell is perhaps the millionth time, the story of Sleeping Beauty. What the story's protagonist called "Seepin' Boot". :]
I smiled. I cried. I was very interested. All in all, this is definitely a good read in my book, one that I will h...more
I smiled. I cried. I was very interested. All in all, this is definitely a good read in my book, one that I will h...more
An odd combination of a fairy tale (Briar Rose aka Sleeping Beauty-- which I did not know) and a Holocaust story. It alternates between the present and past and is about the journey of finding out about your past, especially from those who lived the terrible truths of the 1940s.
A couple things are striking-- first, the cover art is beautiful, the hidden face, the roses, the barbed wire. Second, the topics of homosexuality are examined. Most know that many homosexuals were killed as well as Jews...more
A couple things are striking-- first, the cover art is beautiful, the hidden face, the roses, the barbed wire. Second, the topics of homosexuality are examined. Most know that many homosexuals were killed as well as Jews...more
Apr 07, 2011
Muphyn
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Shelves:
ya-fiction,
fantasy-magic-fairytales,
holocaust,
historical,
ww2,
eastern-europe,
book-challenge
Hmm, I first rated this 3 stars, now I'm debatting to downgrad it to 2 stars. The start was good, the ending wasn't too bad but the middle was seriously weak - I was not impressed (and I can't even be bothered to go into all the details).
Just a couple of things...
1) Once Becca got to Poland (and oh, wasn't that all so very easy all of a sudden?), she was just sooo annoying, constantly correcting Magda's English. Interestingly, Magda only seemed to have trouble constructing simple sentences in En...more
Just a couple of things...
1) Once Becca got to Poland (and oh, wasn't that all so very easy all of a sudden?), she was just sooo annoying, constantly correcting Magda's English. Interestingly, Magda only seemed to have trouble constructing simple sentences in En...more
This beautiful tale takes you out of time and into the "reality" of the Holocaust. Set around a woman's retelling of the simple Sleeping Beauty story you see the influence of World War II in the snatches of the story long before the narrative takes you there. It becomes a matter of the narrative confirming your guesses rather than revealing anything.
I've always been "haunted" by the Holocaust. I've never seen Schindler's List (which may be a good thing since this book had me tearing), but the fa...more
I've always been "haunted" by the Holocaust. I've never seen Schindler's List (which may be a good thing since this book had me tearing), but the fa...more
A horrifying, beautifully written, startling and moving Holocaust story,
one of Yolen's best novels. Not fantasy, despite its marketing. It's about how people use storytelling, particularly fairy-tales, to interpret, deal with, and re-make their lives-- not always in a positive way. This is probably Yolen's Grand Central Theme, and it's particularly apt here.
one of Yolen's best novels. Not fantasy, despite its marketing. It's about how people use storytelling, particularly fairy-tales, to interpret, deal with, and re-make their lives-- not always in a positive way. This is probably Yolen's Grand Central Theme, and it's particularly apt here.
It is hard to imagine how a fairy tale and the Holocaust could have anything in common. Jane Yolen manages to create a powerful allegory of Sleeping Beauty and Gemma’s horrifying internment in a Polish extermination camp.
I did not know too much about this story as I started reading, but I felt a sense of sadness immediately; Gemma in the nursing home, Becca and her strained relationship with her sisters. Even Becca remembering how Gemma told her version of Sleeping Beauty had a terrible sense of...more
I did not know too much about this story as I started reading, but I felt a sense of sadness immediately; Gemma in the nursing home, Becca and her strained relationship with her sisters. Even Becca remembering how Gemma told her version of Sleeping Beauty had a terrible sense of...more
Jane Yolen explores the story of Sleeping Beauty by setting it during the Holocaust. If this sounds like a difficult book to read, it is, but it also addresses the idea of personal history as story and brings to the surface the dark nature of many classic folk tales.
Unfortunately, the dialogue is jarringly flat - I've seen Yolen write much better - and the romantic subplot distracts from the narrative as a whole. If Yolen had just focused on Gemma, this would have been a five-star book.
Unfortunately, the dialogue is jarringly flat - I've seen Yolen write much better - and the romantic subplot distracts from the narrative as a whole. If Yolen had just focused on Gemma, this would have been a five-star book.
Not what I expected from seeing it on "modern fairytale" lists, but this short novel was alright, although Jane Yolen has certainly written better fantasy and historical ficton. Fully a third of it covers the backstory the first two thirds slowly builds up, alternating between present day and the narrator as a child hearing her grandmother tell the same story over and over again. Despite there not being any magic to the story, everything falls together so very easily for the narrator, from uncov...more
Apr 19, 2013
Alanna Elric
added it
The historical fiction, Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen is a wonderful book that wraps you up in its magic. The book is about a young reporter, Becca, who searches for the truth about her newly deceased grandmother's fairy tale, Briar Rose. Somehow this story all ties into the Holocaust and one of its many extermination camps, Chelmno. It's said no one survived that horrible place, so how could her grandmother be involved with it? Most of the Grandmother's past has been a secret, but Becca is determi...more
It's rare to find the lightness of a children's magic story blended with the darkness of real historical evil—with obvious reasons, as it's a little hard on the reader. The word 'Holocaust' on the cover gives some warning, but nothing ever entirely prepares one for graphic, emotive description of such inhuman brutalities as are described toward the end of the novel. It comes as a particular shock after the tender and playful beginning.
On the other hand, the beginning provides the primary hope of...more
On the other hand, the beginning provides the primary hope of...more
The title of the book is Briar Rose by Jane Yolen. The book was first published in 1992 and it is a fantasy story. The main character is Rebecca. She loves when her grandmother tell her the story of Sleeping Beauty. Another important character is Sylvia. She doesn't like to hear the story over and over again. A third important character of this book is Shana and she is Rebecca's and Sylvia's sister. The summary of this book is Rebecca, Shana and Sylvia have a grandmother named Gemma. Rebecca tel...more
A woman tells her grandchildren a story. It is the same story over and over again, and neither the woman nor the grandchildren ever seem to tire of it, though over the years their responses to the story become more fractious. On her deathbed, she repeats the story again and again, the story of Briar Rose who sleeps for a hundred years in a castle surrounded by thorns until she is awakened with a kiss. Her last dying wish to her youngest granddaughter, Becca, now a journalist, is to find this fai...more
I had to read this book for school. Honestly, i had good expectations for the story. But as it turns out, i didn't enjoy it was much as i wanted to. Briar Rose was a re-imaging of a story of Sleeping Beauty, but this book did not seem like a re-imaging of the fairy tale that i was hoping for. It wasn't what i expected. *sigh*
I did not care for the characters, they're were boring, dull and lacking development. The story was not good. I don't understand how my English teacher can like this book. A...more
I did not care for the characters, they're were boring, dull and lacking development. The story was not good. I don't understand how my English teacher can like this book. A...more
Briar Rose is a re-imagining of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Unfortunately, it wasn't the retelling I was hoping for. I had hoped for either a new and adult take on a fairy tale, or a new look at an old story that I could share with my 10 and 12 year old daughters. This book provided neither. Here's what it did give me: a way to see how fairy tales tell us more about real life than we might imagine.
Briar Rose tells the story of Becca, a 23 year old journalist whose grandmother, Gemma, always...more
Briar Rose tells the story of Becca, a 23 year old journalist whose grandmother, Gemma, always...more
Becca's grandmother, called Gemma for the way her oldest granddaughter pronounced "grandma", has spent all the years Becca's known her telling the story of Sleeping Beauty, in a beautiful, peculiar, haunting way that Becca loves and rememembers word for word. But when Gemma dies, leaving behind a box of clippings, photographs, and trinkets, Becca realizes that no one really knew Gemma--they know she's Jewish, think she's Polish, but not even Gemma's daughter knowns where she lived, how she came...more
I freakin' hated this book. I read it for a book discussion group with some other teachers. Most of them liked it but I found it horrendous. It was like a romance novel with a fairy tale theme. The characters were so blah and dumbed down. The youngest sister, Becca, was so goody two shoes it made you want to barf and the older two sisters were like the stereotypical "wicked step-sisters." Plus, it is totally unbelievable that someone as shallow and mean as one of those sisters would be a social...more
I really like fairy tale retellings, so I was eager to read this book. It is a good book, but not so much about fairy tales as about the Holocaust and one girl's struggle to uncover her grandmother's past.
Becca's grandmother, Gemma, always tells the story of Sleeping Beauty. As Gemma ages and gets sick, the story of Sleeping Beauty is the only thing she ever says. When Gemma passes she leaves a mysterious box of trinkets for Becca. Becca has promised to track down her grandmother's past and uses...more
Becca's grandmother, Gemma, always tells the story of Sleeping Beauty. As Gemma ages and gets sick, the story of Sleeping Beauty is the only thing she ever says. When Gemma passes she leaves a mysterious box of trinkets for Becca. Becca has promised to track down her grandmother's past and uses...more
Briar Rose is a unique and inspired retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty. It is part of the Fairy Tale series organized by Terri Windling, which features a number of classic tales retold by well-known fantasy authors.
In this version of the fairy tale, a young woman named Rebecca is very close to her grandmother Gemma. As children, Rebecca and her two older sisters loved to hear their grandmother tell them the story of Briar Rose. The older sisters outgrew their interest in the fairy tale,...more
In this version of the fairy tale, a young woman named Rebecca is very close to her grandmother Gemma. As children, Rebecca and her two older sisters loved to hear their grandmother tell them the story of Briar Rose. The older sisters outgrew their interest in the fairy tale,...more
I am still baffled by the amount of rave reviews Briar Rose received. Admittedly, the story is very unique. The idea of comparing the Holocaust to the Sleeping Beauty fairytale may seem a bit far-fetched initially, yet Yolen manages to bring the truth of this parallel to light. Unfortunately, it was executed in a way that really detracted from what was formally an original idea. Instead we are left with a poorly written, confused, and mediocre young adult novel.
Many of the characters that popula...more
Many of the characters that popula...more
The best parts of this story take place in Poland, as the main character uncovers her grandmother's Holocaust history. Yolen elegantly balances story and history; her European characters struggle to make meaning out of their lives in the dark events that have shaped them. Partisans have to decide what their lives and deaths are worth. Their stories are artistic, grandiose, humorous, elliptical. "If one does not play games, then there is too much to weep about," comments one character.
But it's a...more
But it's a...more
Briar Rose is a Holocaust story, but it is so much more. Becca's grandmother, Gemma, tells her granddaughters the story of Briar Rose. Briar Rose's tale is much like Sleeping Beauty's, only more haunting. On her deathbed, Gemma reveals that she is Briar Rose. Becca promises her grandmother that she will solve the mystery that is her life.
What follows is Becca's journey to discover the story of Gemma's life. Jane Yolen has crafted a beautiful story that also reveals some of history's most horrify...more
What follows is Becca's journey to discover the story of Gemma's life. Jane Yolen has crafted a beautiful story that also reveals some of history's most horrify...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fairy Tales, Kind...: Briar Rose | 1 | 2 | Feb 17, 2013 09:26am | |
| Wild Things: YA G...: February 2011- Briar Rose by Jane Yolen | 19 | 48 | May 30, 2011 09:32am | |
| Endicott Mythic F...: Briar Rose - Discussion | 8 | 26 | Apr 03, 2009 01:17pm |
![Briar Rose [Unabridged] (Audio Cd)](http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1173593838s/307244.jpg)
Yolen was born at Beth Israel Hospital, the first child of Isabel Berlin and Will Hyatt Yolen. She and her family moved to California when she was young but returned to New York a few years later. After her younger brother was born, her father joined the army and served on the European front during WWII. Yolen spent her childhood taking piano lessons, ballet dancing and writing a neighborhood news...more
More about Jane Yolen...
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“Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends... on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.”
—
138 people liked it
“Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.”
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34 people liked it
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