Rating: 
Summary: A dazzling retelling
Review: it is not at all like the traditional, "safe" version of Sleeping Beuty, and apart from having 3 names, she is simply Briar Rose. I would organize it into 3 parts: Gemma's telling of the story, the main story, and Josef's story. Becca travels to Poland in search of her grandmother Gemma's long- forgotten past after a claim that she is briar rose. This is not a middle- age time period, but but takes place during the Hulocast. People who like safe stuff should not read this book, becuase it has a haunting part of the second world war I would like to be without. Becca goes to Chelmno, an extermination camp (in WW2) and gets a sggestion from the preist there to cunsult his friend, Josef, who gives Becca many answers. If you are only focused on what happened to Gemma, I suggest that you skip chapters 25,26, 27, and 28, as they are mainly telling of Josef's history and tragedies of the war. You would think the ending would be disapointing becuase there is still much to find out about Gemma, but it is not. There is allot of unessacary homosexuality, wich is totally unnedded. Overall it is a wonderfully compelling novel that both haunts and pleases. It is enough to change the way I look at WW2, but not enough to change the way you look at the Sleeping beauty fairy tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Lisa 's Billy joe Bob's review
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It's a heart warming and terrffing book. Becca's grandmother dies and it up to her to find out her past. Her search leds her to Polond. She ends up going to a concentration camp and is told to get a hold of Josef. Josef invites her over and tells his story of the war. What I enjoyed most of all was that the fariy tell of Briar Rose was told thruout the story.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: What an interesting take on the Briar Rose fairy tale. The way Yolen fits the specifics of the fairy tale into the reality of the Holocaust is amazing. A great book to read.
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Summary: Fairy Tales and Nazis
Review: Dayna White
Yolen, Jane Briar Rose
New York: Tom Doherty Associates Inc., 1992Fairy Tales and Nazis The story Briar Rose, I thought, was absolutely the best. Growing up, Becca's grandmother, Gemma, told her the tale of Sleeping Beauty time and time again. When Gemma passes away, she leaves her family with few pieces of her past. Gemma migrated to America out of Nazi Germany. Becca, bound to find her true roots, travels to Kulmhof, Germany, where she meets Josef Potocki. Joe takes her back to World War2 in Germany, where Jews, Poles, Communists, Gypsies, and homosexuals were taken prisoner to Nazi camps. Through Josef, Becca learns Gemma's story. Gemma was so much more than Becca knew and made her proud to be her granddaughter. A real tearjerker.
Rating: 
Summary: Even the rose has its thorns.
Review: This book was, in my opinion, an O.K. book. In the beginning it was a very slow read. However the pace did pick up a bit towards the end. It had a good story and lesson attached to it but it took awhile to get to it. Over all I say it's a pretty mediocre book. It didn't real pull me in, and it didn't draw any emotions from me. I also felt no connection to the charecters. I wouldn't recommend this to friend.
Rating:
Summary: A great and entertaing story
Review: Have you ever been told a fairy tale from a loved one or someone who you think you know everything about? Did you ever think that you might not know them as well as you think? This is exactly what happens in the book Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen. In it the two different stories of the Holocaust and Sleeping Beauty are wound together to make it very touching and very moving. In this book Becca Berlin's, grandmother leaves a box full of old papers and pictures that she left in her drawer when she died. It sends Becca on an adventure to Poland that she would never forget. On this adventure Becca learns that the tale that her grandma always told her when she was growing up was really the tale of her life as a Holocaust survivor. I would recommend this book to anyone that is into the Holocaust, but doesn't really want to learn that much about what happened in the concentration camps. This is a great book and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Rating:
Summary: A great and entertaing story
Review: Have you ever been told a farie tale from a loved one or someone who you think you know everything about? Did you ever think that you may not know them as well as you think? This is exatally what happens in the book Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen. In it the two different stories of the Holocaust and Sleeping Beuaty are wound together to make it very touching and very moving. In this this book, the charcter, Becca Berlin's, grandmother leaves a box full of old papers and pictures that sends Becca to Polond on an amazing adventure to learn what really happened to her grandma. On this adventure Becca learns that the tale that her grandma also told her when she was growing up was really the tale of her life as a Holocaust surviver. I would recommend this book to anyone that is into the Holocaust, but doesn't really want to learn that much about what happened in the concentration camps. This is a great book and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy Read
Review: Briar rose is Sleeping Beauty with a twist. Becca as the main character tries to find her grandmothers past, and the only thing that she knows is from a box of pictures and clippings, and the stories that Gemma would tell Becca and her sisters when they were young. When Becca was growing up her grandmother Gemma used to tell her stories very similar to Sleeping Beauty. When her grandmother died she had told Becca on her death bed that the fairy tale was true. This led Becca to Poland to research her past. No one ever knew the real Gemma, Becca was determined to find out who she was. Jane Yolen does a wonderful job of taking such a horrifying experience for many people and making it somewhat easy to swallow. Jane does a wonderful job of helping people understand what really went on in the concentration camps.
Even though this book was very touching in some areas and interesting, there was many times that I feel asleep reading it. The book started to drag in the middle chapters. They were trying to establish the plot but took a really long time. I would recommend this book though to others who want an easy read.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Beauty
Review: Its been a very long time since I thought about the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty, and an even longer time since I have read about it. However, in the space of 5 pages I was immediately absorbed with Yolen's retelling. This novel, centered around one woman's Holocaust experience and intermixed with the classic fairy-tale, is deeply moving. Yolen's uses classic fairy-tale elements like a prince and the curse of a long sleep to connect us to the horrors of the death camp Chelmno. The result is a story that is fresh and shocking as it tares away any of the numbness we may feel for another account of a Holocaust survivor. Suddenly the fairy-tale ideas of rescue and evil are invested with modern connotations.
The novel begins with the story of Becca and her granmother Gemma, who is dying of old age. Becca's grandmother has constantly told Becca and her sisters the story of Briar Rose, and when she passes away it is discovered that Briar Rose may in fact have been Gemma. Becca traces Gemma's history back to Poland and a castle in that area, and proceeds to discover that her Grandmother was one of the few to escape from the Nazi death camp Chelmno. The resulting account we hear tells the story of Gemma's escape and the 'prince'that rescues her.
Overall, I thought this novel was fantastic. Upon doing research for the novel I came across many protestations for its homosexual content and portrayal of Chelmno. However, I think Yolen does an admirable job of complicating our notion of the fairy-tale and our numbness to the horrors of the Holocaust. She creates an environment that is both chilling and hopeful, and her use of Sleeping Beauty creates a connection between Gemma's history and our own.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most powerful books I've ever read
Review: I didn't know what to expect when I started to read this book -- I respect Jane Yolen's work a great deal, and love some of it dearly, but I have differing reactions to the different things she's written. At first I thought it was a fairly standard story about a girl tracking down her grandmother's past, and though the symbolism was beautiful (though I was annoyed at first that she _changed the story_!!!), intertwining very well with the present-day events and the WWII events, I wasn't prepared for what I got. But as I got sucked in by the beauty of the language and the contrasting starkness of the past events, I realized that she wasn't taking me on the same journey I'd been before -- she was taking me into the darkness of a place where the human mind itself cannot go without bending and breaking. It was brilliantly done -- and a very, very hard thing to read. I'm very glad I read it -- once.
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