Illustrations

by George McGinn ©

 

Foreword by Professor George McGinn

Remarkably, the story of "The Gingerbread Boy" in the 1875 May edition of the St Nicholas magazine includes illustrations of all the story's characters with one exception - the gingerbread boy himself is nowhere to be seen. Depictions of the gingerbread boy and background illustrations have been added courtesy of George McGinn ©.

 

Posted in the Letter-Box, St Nicholas, May 1875 (page 452)

The author of the "Gingerbread Boy," in our pages for Little Folks, writes as follows:

"The 'Gingerbread Boy' is not strictly original. A servant girl from Maine told it to my children. It interested them so much that I thought it worth preserving. I asked where she found it, and she said an old lady told it to her in her childhood. So it may possibly have been in print, though I have never seen it."

 

Now you shall hear a story that somebody's great-great-grand-mother told a little girl ever so many years ago:

There was once a little old man and a little old woman, who lived in a little old house in the edge of a wood. They would have been a very happy old couple but for one thing. They had no little child, and they wished for one very much. One day when the little old woman was baking gingerbread, she cut a cake in the shape of a little boy, and put it into the oven.

Presently, she went to the oven to see if it was baked. As soon as the oven door was opened, the little gingerbread boy jumped out, and began to run away as fast as he could go.

The little old woman called her husband, and they both ran after him. But they could not catch him. And soon the gingerbread boy came to a barn full of threshers. He called out to them as he went by, saying:

But, though the cow started at once, she couldn't catch him. And soon he came to a pig. He called out to the pig:

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