John Dough and the Cherub

Did You Know?

• The novel was adapted into film twice by Otis Turner, first as a 40-minute segment of The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908) and then as a ten-minute short in 1910; both films are lost.
• John Dough, Chick the Cherub, and Para Bruin attend Princess Ozma's birthday party in The Road to Oz (1909).

Gender ambiguity

Baum deliberately never specifies the sex of Chick the Cherub, referring to the character as "it" rather than "he" or "she." Chick wears androgynous pajamas, and Neill's illustrations show a Buster Brown haircut that could suit either a boy or a girl. The publishers wanted Baum to resolve the ambiguity, but he refused. Reilly & Britton instead ran a contest in which child readers could vote on Chick's sex, with prizes for the best answers in twenty-five words or less. A detachable form in the first edition allowed entries to be mailed to the publisher; first editions with the contest-page intact are rare collector's items. The second-place prize was won by a boy who read the story in the Seattle Times, though no citations identify the contest winners.

Synopsis

The story opens in the bakery of Jules and Leontine Grogrande, French immigrants in the United States. Their customer Ali Dubh the Arab arrives, pursued by three countrymen because he possesses the Great Elixir, the Essence of Vitality, a drop of which grants health, strength, and longevity. He gives Leontine a golden vial of the Elixir and a silver vial that cures rheumatism. Leontine, colorblind, confuses the bottles and pours the Great Elixir into a bowl of water to bathe her sore limbs. The pain vanishes, and she feels light and airy, but she goes to bed, leaving the bowl in the kitchen. At 3:00 AM on the Fourth of July, Jules bakes a large gingerbread man using the water from the bowl. He forms a figure the size of a fourteen-year-old boy, shaped like a typical French gentleman, with glass eyes, white candy teeth, and lozenge buttons. When baked, the figure comes to life, endowed with intelligence and multilingual speech. Jules flees; John Dough takes the baker's top hat and a candy-cane cane and sets out to see the world. Ali Dubh, outraged, realizes he can regain the Elixir's benefits by eating the gingerbread man and pursues him.

Baum's fantasy cosmos

John Dough and the Cherub returns to the hybrid fantasy world of Baum's Oz books. Like Dorothy Gale, John Dough travels by air from a contemporary United States to imaginary countries, meeting fairies, talking animals, and animated artificial beings such as a scarecrow and a wooden Indian. Chick the Cherub is another free-spirited, fearless child protagonist, though implied to be much older than their appearance suggests. The Great Elixir resembles the Powder of Life from Baum's fantasy domain. Baum mixes technology into the story, referencing aircraft and incubators, recent developments in 1906. The divided country of Hiland and Loland foreshadows Sky Island (1912). The fairy beavers appear in Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and their gem-encrusted underground realm resembles the Nome King's domain. John Dough, Chick, and Para Bruin make cameo appearances in The Road to Oz (1909). A mifket appears in Rinkitink in Oz (1916); Neill included the Mifkits in The Scalawagons of Oz (1941), and Jack Snow included the fairy beavers in The Shaggy Man of Oz (1949).