Jane Yolen has taken the traditional aspects of the Grimm's "Little Briar Rose" and has modernised them, using them skillfully to create Gemma's past. As a post-modern text, the story is told from multiple perspectives, from multiple time periods.

With multiple time settings, the present and Holocaust Era Poland, the reader is transported back in time, along with the character Becca, in a quest to discover the truth.

Yolen has taken traditional elements and motifs from Grimm's "Little Briar Rose" and has skillfully applied them to her Holocaust story, for example the briary hedge becomes barbed wire surrounding the camp, the spell or mist is the carbon monoxide gas, pumped into the vans, obviously the sleep is death.

Through modernising the story of Briar Rose, Yolen has created a holocaust story with a difference, and in many ways it is the juxtaposition of the violence and horrific nature of those events with a story we all remember from the innocent time of childhood, that makes this story so powerful & unique.