I have read the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty but never like this. The story Briar Rose combines the fairy tale sleeping beauty with the worrifying story of the Holocaust. The grandmother in the story (Gemma), tells the story of sleeping beauty to her three grandchildren named Sylvia, Shanna, and Becca. When Gemma dies, Becca, youngest of the three, promises to her grandmother before she died that she would look for the sleeping beauty. Not really sure what her grandmother meant on her death bed, Becca goes in search of her grandmothers death in a camp in Poland. There Becca finds a man named Josef who tells Becca the story of her grandmothers trials and tribulations as a jewish person living back during the Holocaust. Becca realizes her roots and just what Gemma went through before she died. The author Jane Yolen did a great job twinning together such opposites. I learned a lot from this book and had a good time reading it. I would recommend this book to everyone.