Rating: 
Summary: Uh, Everyone is missing the obvious question
Review: This isn't a story for the weak of stomach or weak of heart, or those looking for a tidy novelization of a Disney-esque Sleeping Beauty. In Briar Rose, Jane Yolen takes the traditional Sleeping Beauty in the Wood fairy tale and sets it in Poland during the reign of Hitler. Becca, granddaugher of Gemma, is haunted by the Sleeping Beauty story her grandmother told hundreds of times, and even struggled to tell on her deathbed. Gemma's last wish is that Becca will reclaim the castle and find the prince Gemma left behind half a century ago.The search takes Becca on a terrifying journey into a land torn by war, where innocent people are murdered and tortured simply for being Jewish, Romani, or homosexual. Yolen is quite explicit with descriptions of Holocaust atrocities that actually (unbelievably) happened. I read this book in one day and cried when the prince and his companions arrived at the deathcamp of Chelmno. Read this book, and please visit http://www.remember.org to learn more about the 11 million who died in concentration camps, to get an idea of what the places described in the book look like, and to prevent anything as awful as the Holocaust from happening ever again.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful
Review: When I read this book, it took my breath away. Yolen did a beautiful job of combining the horrors of the Holocaust and the beauty of the fairy tale. It is to this day my favorite book of all time!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Briar DUMB
Review: I really was disappointed by this book. I head that it was really good and a great thing to read, but it turns out that it was positively terrible! The plot was completely baffling. I KNOW I'm not a bad reader, but just to be sure, I had my sister read it as well. She didn't get it either! Besides being confusing, it is pretty perverse. Take my advice - don't even open the cover of this book... you'll only be disappointed and disgusted.
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