Part of the Fairy Tale series created by Terri Windling, Yolen's recasting of the Sleeping Beauty tale is not fantasy; rather, it is a story evocatively grounded in the horror of the Holocaust. Ever since Rebecca was a toddler, she and her two older sisters had heard a unique version of Sleeping Beauty over and over again from their beloved grandmother, Gemma, who insists that she is Briar Rose. Alternating chapters advance the fairy tale and Rebecca's experiences in trying to fulfill her promise made on Gemma's death bed to find the castle in the sleeping woods, which Gemma leaves to Rebecca. Rebecca's investigation takes her to her grandmother's native Poland, from which emerges a tale of Nazi brutality, gas chambers, partisan activity, courage, guilt, and love. Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, Yolen's novel is a compelling reminder of the Holocaust as well as a contemporary tale of secrets and romance. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1992)

The latest in the Fairy Tales series begins with a provocative premise: retelling the story of Sleeping Beauty as a Holocaust memoir. Rebecca Berlin (Becca), the sweet young heroine, fondly recalls the odd version of Sleeping Beauty that her grandmother (Gemma) often told her and her sisters. Although Gemma always identified strongly with Briar Rose, the sleeping princess, no one had thought it anything but a bedtime story—but when a mysterious box of clippings and photos turns up after Gemma's death, hinting that the accepted version of Gemma's origins is untrue, Becca begins tracing the real story, which bears striking resemblances to Gemma's fairy tale. The trail finally leads Becca to the site of an extermination camp in Poland.... The idea has lots of potential, but Yolen's thin novel fails to integrate the material smoothly. The first half has little tension, since the Holocaust connection is pretty obvious; things pick up once Becca travels to Poland, and the narrative of Gemma's wartime experiences is riveting and moving—but it's all told by a third party at the end of the book; Becca doesn't so much solve the mystery as find a narrator to tell her the story. Meanwhile, overwrought emotions and hackneyed images (``his eyes were so blue she felt cut by them, as if they were ice'') don't help, and Becca's relentless goody-goodiness grows more than a little annoying. Prolific YA and children's writer Yolen (White Jenna, 1989, etc.) had a good idea here, but didn't follow through."