A review by toad_maiden
Onion John by Joseph Krumgold

2.0

The first scene in this book describes in detail a long and boring little league game and, for this reason, it took me a week to get past the first couple of chapters. It wasn't nearly so bad once I got into the book, though, and even had some valuable bits. In general, this book is the first attempt at postcolonial ideas in a children's book that I've seen, albeit in a highly simplified and suburbanized way. The main theme is "We tried convince this poor, weird, non-English-speaking guy to live like us against his will because we find him uncivilized, but we should not have imposed." There's also a lot of witchy superstition, which I love, even if the whole book tries to discredit it.

However, there's a lot I don't like about this book, also. There is literally one female character in the cast of a whole town (the protagonist's mother) and she literally doesn't even have a name. This is also the second book by Krumgold that I've read and I can now say that I hate the way he writes kids' voices. While I can generally get behind a more conversational tone, his characters always seem downright stupid. For the second time, I have had doubts about the protagonist's age and mental capacities because of Krumgold's voice. I feel that this is disrespectful and condescending toward his kid readers, and probably has a lot to do with why his books aren't more widely remembered today.

Overall, while Krumgold does try to tackle some big ideas here, the attempt is overly domesticated and his voice is strained and condescending.