1. Jane Yolen Author Biography

Mar 15, 2002  'Briar Rose' by Jane Yolen is a powerful novel about the Holocaust. Set in the present day with flashbacks to the Holocaust, it is an unforgettable story. Yolen skillfully weaves Gemma's recounting of the Briar Rose story with what really happened and it is heartbreaking and moving. 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 on a remarkable journey to uncover the truth of Gemma’s astonishing claim: I am B An American Library Association “100.

Briar Rose is a young adult novel written by American author Jane Yolen, published in 1992. Incorporating elements of Sleeping Beauty, it was published as part of the Fairy Tale Series of novels compiled by Terri Windling. The novel won the annual Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in 1993. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award.

• 1Plot summary
• 2Style

Plot summary[edit]

The book is divided into two parts, the 'home', and the 'castle'. The ending is part of the 'home' section, returning after the castle.

The story is based around the German fairy tale of Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) which is told by 'Gemma', an elderly woman, to her three granddaughters. She tells this to the children almost all the time and it is the only bedtime story she ever tells. The times when 'Gemma' tells the story are flashbacks and alternate between the present-day story.

'Home'[edit]

In the present day, Gemma's Jewish family is living somewhere outside a city in Massachusetts. After her grandmother's death, Rebecca Berlin, the youngest of her three granddaughters (referred to as Becca in the novel) begins to believe that there is some meaning behind the bedtime story that her grandmother told to them hundreds of times. She consults Stan, a good friend and journalist who works for an 'alternative' newspaper and uncovers historical facts.

She discovers that her grandmother was actually a survivor of the Holocaust who was persecuted for her Jewish origins, and sent to Chełmno extermination camp to be executed. She decides to visit Chełmno and discovers a link with a man by the name of Josef Potocki in Poland. Becca sets off for Poland to find the identity and the life of her grandmother.

The Castle - Josef's story[edit]

In Poland, Josef tells his life story and his meeting with Gemma. In the book, his story is told in the 'castle' section. He was a target of the Holocaust due to his homosexuality, and became a fugitive, during which time he met many different people, mainly partisans, mainly in Germany. He had heard stories of torture and extermination camps and joined an underground group set out to rescue victims. This leads him to Chełmno (called Kulmhof by the Germans), where he witnesses the gassing to death of numerous people. The people are brought to the camp and then packed into trucks. The trucks drive away, with their exhaust funnelled into the passenger hold. By the time the trucks arrive at their destination, a mass grave, all of the people it was carrying have been gassed to death by the truck exhaust. The people are then dumped into the grave. When the bodies are dumped one of the partisans, named The Avenger notices that a woman with red hair (Gemma) is still alive and faintly breathing. Josef revives her through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which the woman, (who is later called KSIĘŻNICZKA, which means 'princess' in Polish) refers to in her fairy tale as 'the kiss of life'. In reality, during this period of time, 320,000 were killed in Chelmno via the method of gassing them in trucks.

Later, she hid in the forest with Polish partisans, fighting the Nazis, and married The Avenger, whom Josef was also in love with. She became pregnant by him shortly after their marriage. Then he, along with almost all of the other partisans, was killed by the Nazis. She escaped and was brought safely to the United States. She never told a soul about these experiences, rather dealing with the trauma by refashioning them in her mind into the form of a familiar fairytale about an evil witch, a princess rendered unconscious who is then revived by a handsome prince, and a happy ending.

'Home Again'[edit]

The final part of the book is simply a conclusion where Becca returns to the U.S. to tell Stan and her family about what she discovered. At the airport, Stan is there to pick her up. He kisses her, and says 'We'll get to our happily ever after eventually'.

Style[edit]

Juxtaposition[edit]

The story was written to juxtapose the present-day story with the fairy tale that Gemma tells them. In the book, every odd chapter (except for within the Castle) is a flashback to Becca's childhood in which Gemma tells her story to her grandchildren. Gemma is a victim of the holocaust.

Setting at Chełmno[edit]

Jane Yolen Author Biography

At the Chełmno extermination camp ~340,000 people, mainly Jewish prisoners, were killed. The extermination of the Łódź Ghetto took place in Chełmno.

Response[edit]

Briar Rose has received a very warm response from most critics, especially for its unusual organization. The book is not told in a direct beginning-to-end style, and the story is not told directly to the reader but rather through the fairy tale. Critics praised it for this type of storytelling technique, and in 1992 the Science Fiction Chronicle awarded Briar Rose the Best fantasy Novel of the Year.

Briar Rose was also part of Australia's New South Wales Department of Education and Training's Higher School Certificate curriculum.

Kirsten Dunst has listed it as her favorite book.

See also[edit]

Resources[edit]

Jane Hyatt Yolen (born February 11, 1939) is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, and children's books. She is the author or editor of more than 350 books, of which the best known is The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella.^[1][2] Her other works include the Nebula Award-winning short story Sister Emily's Lightship, the novelette Lost Girls, Owl Moon, The Emperor and the Kite, the Commander Toad series and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight.^[3] She has collaborated on works with all three of her children, most extensively with Adam Stemple.^[1]

Yolen gave the lecture for the 1989 Alice G. Smith Lecture, the inaugural year for the series. This lecture series is held at the University of South Florida School of Information 'to honor the memory of its first director, Alice Gullen Smith, known for her work with youth and bibliotherapy.' In 2012 she became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture.^[4]

• 4Awards

Early life[edit]

Jane Hyatt Yolen was born on February 11, 1939 at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. She is the first child of Isabell Berlin Yolen, a psychiatric social worker who became a full-time mother and homemaker upon Yolen's birth, and Will Hyatt Yolen, a journalist who wrote columns at the time for New York newspapers,^[5] and whose family emigrated from the Ukraine to the United States.^[1] Isabell also did volunteer work, and wrote short stories in her spare time. However, she was not able to sell them. Because the Hyatts, the family of Yolen's grandmother, Mina Hyatt Yolen, only had girls, a number of the children of Yolen's generation were given their last name as a middle name in order to perpetuate it.^[5]

When Yolen was barely one year old, the family moved to California to accommodate Will's new job working for Hollywood film studios, doing publicity on films such as American Tragedy and Knut Rockne. The family moved back to New York City prior to the birth of Yolen's brother, Steve. When Will joined the Army as a Second Lieutenant to fight in England during World War II, Yolen, her mother and brother lived with her grandparents, Danny and Dan, in Newport News, Virginia. After the war, the family moved back to Manhattan, living on Central Park West and 97th Street until Yolen turned 13. She attended PS 93, where she enjoyed writing and singing, and became friends with future radio presenter Susan Stamberg. She also engaged writing by creating a newspaper for her apartment with her brother that she sold for five cents a copy. She was accepted to Music and Art High School. During the summer prior to that semester, she attended a Vermont summer camp, which was her first involvement with the Society of Friends (Quakers). Her family also moved to a ranch house in Westport, Connecticut, where she attended Bedford Junior high for ninth grade, and then Staples High School.^[5] She received a BA from Smith College in 1960 and a master's degree in Education from the University of Massachusetts in 1978.^[1] After graduating she moved back to New York City.^[5]

Career[edit]

During the 1960s, Yolen held editorial positions at various magazines and publishers in New York City, including Gold Medal Books, Routledge Books, and Alfred A. Knopf Juvenile Books. From 1990 to 1996 she ran her own young adult fiction imprint, Jane Yolen Books, at Harcourt Brace.^[1]

Although Yolen considered herself a poet, journalist and nonfiction writer, she became a children's book writer. Her first published book was Pirates in Petticoats, which was published on her 22nd birthday.^[5]

Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, Favorite Folktales From Around the World, Xanadu and Xanadu 2 are among the works that she has edited.

Her book Naming Liberty, tells the story of a Russian girl and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty.^[2]

She has co-written two books with her son, the writer and musician Adam Stemple, Pay the Piper and Troll Bridge, both part of the Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale series.^[6] She also wrote lyrics for the song 'Robin's Complaint,' recorded on the 1994 album Antler Dance by Stemple's band Boiled in Lead.^[7]

Regarding the similarities between her novel Wizard's Hall, and the Harry Potter series, Yolen has commented on J.K. Rowling, the author of that series:

I'm pretty sure she never read my book. We were both using fantasy tropes—the wizard school, the pictures on the wall that move. I happen to have a hero whose name was Henry, not Harry. He also had a red-headed best friend and a girl who was also his best friend—though my girl was black, not white. And there was a wicked wizard who was trying to destroy the school, who was once a teacher at the school. But those are all fantasy tropes ...There's even a book that came out way before hers where children go off to a witch school or a wizard school by going on a mysterious train that no one else can see except the kids, at a major British train station—I don’t know if it was Victoria Station or King's Cross. These things are out there ...This is not new.'^[4]

Personal life[edit]

In 1962, Yolen married David W. Stemple. They had three children and six grandchildren. Stemple died in March 2006. Yolen lives in Southern Massachusetts. She also owns a house in Scotland, where she lives for a few months each year.^[1][5]

Awards[edit]

• 1968 Caldecott Medal (for The Emperor and the Kite, illustrated by Ed Young)
• 1987 Special World Fantasy Award (for Favorite Folktales From Around the World)^[3]
• 1988 Caldecott Medal (for Owl Moon, illustrated by John Schoenherr)^{[citation needed]}
• 1992 The Catholic Library Association's Regina Medal (for her body of children's literature)^[8][9]
• 1999 Nebula Award for Novelette (for 'Lost Girls')^[10]
• 2009 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention. A panel of judges selects about two people annually.^[3][10]
• 2017 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award^[11]

Nominations[edit]

• 1984 World Fantasy Award for Anthology/Collection (for Tales of Wonder)^[3]
• 1986 World Fantasy Award for Anthology/Collection (for Dragonfield and Other Stories)^[3]
• 1987 World Fantasy Award for Anthology/Collection (for Merlin's Booke)^[3]
• 1989 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella (for Briar Rose)^[3]
• 1993 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (for The Devil's Arithmetic)^[3]

Bibliography[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcdefMyman, Francesca (March 12, 2017). 'Jane Yolen: Accidental Novelist'. Locus. Archived from the original on February 14, 2019. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
2. ^ ^ab'A Life in Books: Jane Yolen'. The Daily Beast. May 24, 2008. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
3. ^ ^abcdefgh'Award Winners & Nominees [1975 to present]'. World Fantasy Convention. Archived from the original on December 1, 2010. Retrieved September 24, 2013.Cite uses deprecated parameter deadurl= (help)
4. ^ ^abAdams, John Joseph; Barr Kirtley, David (January 23, 2013). 'Author Jane Yolen Talks Book Banning and Harry Potter'. Wired.
5. ^ ^abcdefYolen, Jane. 'A Short Biography'. janeyolen.com. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
6. ^[1]^{[dead link]}
7. ^Lipsig, Chuck (January 17, 2011). 'Boiled in Lead: The Not Quite Complete Recordings'. Green Man Review. Archived from the original on January 21, 2011. Retrieved April 26, 2015.Cite uses deprecated parameter dead-url= (help)
8. ^'Regina Medal'Archived April 27, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Catholic Library Association. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
9. ^Carpan, Carolyn (2005). Jane Yolen. Infobase Publishing (Who Wrote That? series). ISBN9780791086605 p. 112. Archived at Google Books. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
10. ^ ^ab'Jane Yolen'. Science Fiction Awards Database (sfadb.com). Mark R. Kelly and the Locus Science Fiction Foundation. 2012–2013. September 25, 2013.
11. ^'SFWA Announces Newest Damon Knight Grand Master – Jane Yolen'. SFWA. November 29, 2016. Retrieved November 29, 2016.

External links[edit]

• Official website
• Jane Yolen at the Comic Book DB
• Jane Yolen at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Bibliography on SciFan
• 2001 interview and review of Briar Rose by RoseEtta Stone (underdown.org)
• Biography by Rita Berman Frischer, Encyclopedia, Jewish Women's Archive
• Jane Yolen at Library of Congress Authorities, with 359 catalog records