“We are planning a party, a very special party, the women and I.”  opens Let the Celebrations BEGIN!, a book written by Margaret Wild and illustrated by Julie Vivas.  Let the Celebrations BEGIN! tells the story of one girl, Miriam, and a group of women who are preparing for a party, making toys for the children they live with.

Let the Celebrations BEGIN! was short-listed for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year in 1992, a well-deserved honour.  Wild has crafted a story which will touch older children and adults alike.  The words are chosen carefully and Vivas’ pictures compliment them perfectly.

This is, truly, what makes Let the Celebrations BEGIN! such a poignant book. It is only by way of the combination of test and picture that the true story filters through.  If the book was read to someone without the pictures, the story would likely seem very pedestrian and with little substance.  The seamless combination of text and pictures is what make this story.

No direct mention of concentration camps is ever made within the book, but older children, with scaffolding and background knowledge would soon realise that is where the book is set.  The people are drawn in rags, and painfully thin, and the very first page after the title page shows an aerial view of the whole concentration camp.  This emaciated, bristle-haired look is synonymous with pictures from the Holocaust, and is especially evident on page seven, where Miriam even comments on the thinness of a little boy, David. “See his hungry eyes and his legs. His legs! The chickens running in our yard were fatter.”

This understated, darker story than that of a group of strange-looking women making toys and planning a party, is what makes Let the Celebrations BEGIN! a post-colonial book.  The oppression of the Jews is something the whole world looks at and cringes.  Hitler’s domination and fear-mongering caused millions of Jewish deaths and sent millions more into the concentration camps.

Out of this horror have come many books, and Let the Celebrations BEGIN! is an excellent demonstration of these literatures.  The holocaust and what happened during the war are hard concepts, and this book could be used to help begin that learning in the classroom, or expand on it.  It shows, through the women’s actions, how some things had to be hidden from the guards.  Miriam and her friends must sew only at night when the guards are asleep.  It also talks of how thin the children, and demonstrates how little food they are given, and that the women “are cutting up [their] own clothes” because they have nothing else to use.

It is not hard to find the post-colonialism in this book, at least for adults, but children would have to be helped and informed about concentrations camps and the occurrences during the war and Hitler’s lead.  Once they have all the information, however, they will see how difficult life must have been for Jews during this oppression.

While there is nothing overt within this book and Wild never outright tells the reader she is speaking of the concentration camps, it is clear this is what she refers to.  Together, Wild and Vivas tell this post-colonial story with clever care, and the book is well worth reading for any age-group.

Review by Cassandra Bicker

© 2005 Cassandra Bicker

This piece was originally submitted as part of the course work in Post-colonial Literature for Children.