I have purchased the "wordless book" put out by Child Evangelism Fellowship. It is just a few pages stapled together into a small book. Each page is a different color: gold, black, red, white, and green.

Briefly the story is linked to the colors, in order, heaven, sin, blood of Jesus, fogiveness(made clean), spiritual growth. The full patter is a very good way to present the Gospel to children.

Now, isn't this a story begging to be converted to a magic coloring book type effect!

Does anyone know if it is currently sold? If not, are there thoughts on what it would take to get it sold? CEF has the copyright on the booklet, does anyone hold the copyright on the magic coloring book concept?

John

I use the hot rod effect for the wordless book. Some of the gems I replaced on the hot rod to reflect the colors on the wordless book.

The concept of the colouring book has been in the public domain since it's first publication in the Sixteenth Century

I use the color changing teapot for the wordless book. Also do it as a silk trick with a change bag.
Rick

I know of a trick, it is on Duan Laflin's Video "Surprises for the Eyes". IT has something simular to this.

Drkptrs1975:

I could not find this on his site, but it sounds like it is just a description not an item for sale.

If anyone knows where this could be bought let me know. Otherwise I will make one.
To keep the bulk down I think I will print out a page of each color, and then make color copies of them, but making color copies will cost me about $0.70 per page, ouch! (my other choice is to use colored pieces of paper, but to prevent the other colors from showing, I want a white border.

Yet I would like to perform this for a family reunion latter this month - so not a bad price to pay to witness to each of my relatives that I rarely see.

John

For Some reason, it is on Dock Haley's Gospel Magic, at gospelmagic.com. Look for it on videos. I don't know why that is.

I called Dock Haley's and talked with Steve Varro; they do not have the Wordless book in a magic Coloring Book format. He is considerig whether he might try to produce it in the future.

Meanwhile, I bought some paper and will try to make one this weekend.

John

I've used a dye-tube (or better, a Palmo silk ball) to provide a "wordless book" presentation with a number of different nine-inch silks...

I don't use a black one, though: rather, I have a dirty white one with the word "SIN" on it. An interesting twist is to observe that if the "SIN" is personal (displayed on my chest), it looks "NIS" (i.e., nice) to me.

If you want to use this idea, please put in the necessary practice so that the dye-tube isn't "suspected, let alone detected."

cheers, Doug

All

I made a Wordless coloring book from scratch, and it is a clunker. I used paper that was too thick.

Here's what I recommend, and I hope to use at my upcoming family reunion. Buy a regular (magical) Coloring Book, but make sure that when you riffle from the back to front that you see all blank pages, and not the blank pages that you would see while riffling from front to back(the normal direction)

Then, 1) paste/tape red and black paper to the appropriate loactions. (be sure to cut the paper smaller than the books pages(you will need a decent border around the colored paper), use the thiness paper you can find(20 lb if you can get it in the right colors)

2) past/tape gold colored paper to the reverse riffle pages mentioned above

3) cover the outside of the book with green paper.

Since my colored paper was rather thick, I just used the colored paper on the one side, and covered up the drawing with thinner white paper. If you had thin colored paper you could do both exposed sides.

This works!, the rifling is not as good as initially, but it will work.

Personally, I like using the book more than other props. The book seems so unassuming, and I think/hope it will be less distracting from the message. Yet, the worless book message is good no matter.

There is one thing that I found a bit weak in the wordless book presentation, little discussion of FAITH, receiving Christ by faith, and what that means.

A little off topic, but a great illustration for faith is the story of a French type-rope walker, Blondine, who was not only the first to walk across Niagra Falls on a tight-rope, but he also carried his manager over on his back as a follow-up! Now, imagine, asking people if after seeing this feat, how many believe that he can carry someone across; "why yes, we saw him do it". Do you really believe he can? "Why of course we saw him do it". Great, who wants to go next? That takes faith, you need to trust him, you need to trust that what Jesus did on the cross is sufficient for your sins....

I've been thinking about what magic effect could be used for this. At the moment, I'm leaning towards running a loop of string between two candle sticks(kind of looks like a tight rope), and put a ring on the string to represent Blondine(not sure if I will put or take it off magically though), and then a Jardine Ellis ring to magically attach a second ring to the first(representing one carrying the other)

Its just a thought, but I would appreciate any comments

John

Update: July 15 2005

Well, I'll respond to my own post, again.

The Ellis ring will not be appropriate for the tight-rope effect; I am now considering a Himber ring, McAbee rings, or a miniature key ring from a linking ring effect(but will need to hide the "key".

Your thoughts are appreciated

John

I'm late on this, but I have made up a Hexaflexagon with the colors.

I can't remember but I think it was 4 sided. It has been a while so don't ask how it is made. Do a web search for Hexaflexagon and you'll get all the informantion you need.

I wonder if you couldn't do something like Twisting the Aces, but instead using cards made up kind of in fashion of color monte.

I use the "Wordless Book" colors in a balloon program. I "construct" a person, that can be worn as a hat - the inspiration was from here -

http://balloonhq.com/column/balchunas/feb04/

I am using it on Halloween at a Harvest Party/Trunk or Treating event for a church.

By the way, I also have gone away from using the color black, for various reasons. Instead I use the color blue - like in "I really blew (blue) it", when talking about sin. It is a dark color, which tells us about how dark our hearts are and need to be made clean (not white).

As a side note, Ralph Dewey has developed some nice balloon routines with the colors. One I recall sculpts them into flowers.


peace,
phill

You might take a blank notebook and use watercolors to paint the pages, then cut the edges a la magic coloring book.

The oldest description of the coloring book is in "Discovery of Witchcraft" (1584)where a coloring book with pages of solid colors (I think it was seven different colors) is explained.

S%