Skip to main content

Briar and Rose and Jack

Image
By


Briar and Rose and Jack
By Katherine Coville
Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. 360 p.

In this classic fairytale mashup a king and a queen give birth to twin daughters which the queen names Briar and Rose. Since the first born daughter has a heavy brow and a sagging eye the king and his counselors aren’t sure that she would make a good ruler someday. So they hide her identity and name the second born daughter as their heir. They throw a huge celebration and invite all the fairies in the land (except the Gray Fairy who is mean and always ruins things). Briar’s godmother (who was at the birth of the twins and knows the truth) is sad that Rose will get all of the fairies gifts. So she magically switches the babies during the fairy gifts. Of course the Gray fairy crashes the party and gives a “prick her finger and die” gift that is turned into a “prick your finger and sleep” gift; however, because of the magical swapping the godmother has no idea which girl is slated to slumber. 

Meanwhile the kingdom is bullied by a huge giant that comes and destroys part of the kingdom and takes half of the crops and gold. One of the poorer families most affected by this is Jack. Eventually Jack becomes friends with Briar (an “orphan” raised by the king) and Rose. The three are just children but they decide that they want to work to defeat the giant since the grownups won’t. Of course everything comes crashing to a head just before the girls turn 16 and the giant is being especially destructive.

This is a fun mash-up of multiple fairy tales. The main characters are charming, the magic is abundant, and there is a good mixture of middle-grade adventure and romance (there is the kiss near the end where the princess wakes up).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Painting for Peace in Ferguson

By
Painting for Peace in Ferguson By Carol Swartout Klein Treehouse Publishing Group, 2015. Nonfiction. When the city of Ferguson was overrun with so much hate and despair that homes and businesses had to be boarded up to protect property, citizens of the community decided to bring a message of hope by painting the boarded windows. Klein’s rhyming text supports the photographs of the hundreds of artists and volunteers and their artwork as they bring the messages of peace, hope, love, and that by being united they can make a difference. A great book to show children how a community rallied to make a positive change and that even a small gesture can make a huge difference. A great discussion opener on how we should treat each other.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Bletchley Riddle

By
  The Bletchley Riddle By Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin New York: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024. Fiction. 392 pages. It's spring of 1940, Hitler has swept through most of Europe, and people believe England will be next. Half Polish-Jewish, half American Jakob has been recruited from Cambridge to Bletchley Park where they are working on deciphering the enigma machine. Jakob's sister Lizzie, meanwhile, is being forced to move from London to Cleveland to live with her grandmother after her mother disappeared in a 1939 attack in Poland. Lizzie manages to escape the keeper her grandmother sent for her to bring her to America and makes her way to Bletchley, where she's eventually given the task of delivering messages between departments. When secret messages begin appearing with Lizzie's belongings, she must decipher them to find the truth about her mother's past and location, while keeping the secrets away from the MI5 agent that seems a little t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dragon Run

By
Dragon Run by Patrick Matthews Scholastic, 2013.  336 pgs.  Fantasy      Al Pilgrommor is excited for Testing Day, when he will receive his rank, a tattooed number on the back of his neck, and a path forward to his future occupation and life.  He feels confident because his parents were fours on a scale of seven, but he is worried for his friend Wisp who doesn't have much of a chance of scoring above a two at best. But when Al is scored a zero, he not only has no prospects, he may lose his life as the dreaded Cullers are unleashed to kill him and his family to purify the land's bloodlines.  Al's world is ruled by dragons--the lords and supposed creators of humankind--so he thinks that even if he survives, he will have to make his living as a beggar or thief. But when Al sticks up for his Earther friend in front of Magister Ludi, he is drawn into the struggle of a secret organization hoping to destroy the Cullers, and perhaps the dragons them...
1 comment
Read more