John Dough and the Cherub
First edition design
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| Author | L. Frank Baum |
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| Illustrator | John R. Neill |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Reilly & Britton |
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Publication date
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1906 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
John Dough and the Cherub is a children's fantasy novel written by American author L. Frank Baum, about a living gingerbread man and his adventures. It was illustrated by John R. Neill, and published in 1906 by the Reilly & Britton Company. The story was serialized in the Washington Sunday Star and other newspapers from October to December 1906. Like the Oz books but unlike many of the author's other works, John Dough was issued under Baum's name rather than one of his pseudonyms. The book was popular; as late as 1919 it was selling 1500 copies a year. The 1974 Dover Publications edition features an introduction by Martin Gardner.
Throughout his text, Baum is careful never to specify the sex of his character Chick the Cherub, even to the point of referring to Chick as "it" instead of "he" or "she." Chick dresses in androgynous pajamas; Neill pictures Chick in a Buster Brown haircut that could fit either a boy or a girl.
The publishers wanted Baum to resolve the ambiguity, but he refused. Eventually they made the best of the situation: in the publicity campaign for the original edition, Reilly & Britton conducted a contest in which the book's child readers could vote on Chick's sex. The children who gave the best answers, in 25 words or less, won prizes. The contest was presented as a detachable form in front of the first edition of the book, to be detached, filled out, and mailed to the publisher; first editions with the contest-page intact are rare collectors' items.
The contest's second-place prize was won by a boy who read the story in the Seattle Times. His entry read, "The Cherub was a girl because if it had been a boy he would have eaten the ginger-bread man at once whether it agreed with him or not."
The story begins in the bakery of Jules and Leontine Grogrande, French immigrants to the United States. Their mysterious local customer, Ali Dubh the Arab, comes to the bakery one day with an urgent request. He is being pursued by three of his countrymen, because he possesses the Great Elixir — "the Essence of Vitality, the Water of Life." A mere drop of this liquid can endow a person with pronounced health, strength, and longevity. Ali Dubh pleads with Madame Grogrande to hide the golden vial of the Elixir for him; she is reluctant, but relents when the Arab also provides her with a silver vial that contains a cure for her rheumatism.
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