Hank Lee's sells something that I keep on meaning to buy. Its called the animated coloring book. Apparently its a coloring book with many different effects that can be utilized with it. I think it looks and sounds great. It seems like it would have a strong impact on all age groups including adults! Heres the link, you all might want to check it out!

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......7&20

I taped a small cardboard box to my coloring book and I have a verson of the vanishing crayons.

I show the coloring book blank, I take a kid and hand him a MAGIC markder and pretend to draw on the cover of the book, instantly the book now has the drawings.

I then tell them that we are going to color this togeter and hold the crayons in my hand and have the helper cover the crayons with his hand, then I hand him the box and tell him the wave the magic marker over the box and remove the hanky - the crayons are gone.

I then show that the book is now in color.

I then tell the helper to wave the magic wand over th book and the pages are blank again, then suddenly the crayons fall out of the book.

My act is circus themed, and the emphasis is on comedy. I did the act the other day for a very large, very mixed group. It was a seniors/kids day at the parks and recreation department. There were about a hundred kids ages 4 to 12, a smattering of parent age adults, and about 70 older adults, seniors, age 65 to 85 or so. I did exactly the same show I always do, including the coloring book, which I introduce as a 'pitch' like they have at an actual circus..'step right up, get your Small Wonder Circus souvenir coloring book right here'... it fits the act.

I saw a couple of the older kids whispering to the friend beside them, probably that they knew how it was done or that they'd seen this before. It wasn't enough to be disruptive in a group this size. The other 198 people loved it though. Same with my rabbit-in-the-hat puppet routine, often percieved as being for little kids. It is all in the presentation for me. The goal is comedy, if the magic wows them, great (and this day it did), but I really only care about the laughs. It went great, the organizer loved me, everybody had a great time.

I don't think you can look at a trick and simply deem it too childish for a particular group. Although I admit, a narrower group, say 13 year olds only, might find the trick a little insulting, but I always make the grown-ups help me color too, especially the grumpy looking old guys (who, interestingly, are almost always willing to cooperate) so the kids seem to get that it's alright to goof around a little and play along if the adults are willing as well. I don't know, it just seems to work ok, maybe because it's in the middle of my act, same with Fluffy, my bunny, so the audience already gets my character, that it's mostly ridiculous comedy and I'm not trying to fool anyone or make anyone look dumb (except maybe myself).

If you want a coloring book that will fool the teen-age "know-alls", try Jim Gerrish's Coloring Book from his Kid Magic series on my site. It's a regular coloring book from the Dollar Store (or any toy or book store), the coloring is made by real crayons (not printed on), and at the end, you remove the colors and make the vanished crayons reappear, then hand out the uncolored book and the crayons to your child helper to take home and color the old fashioned way.

It requires some "do-it-yourself" work to make it, but that assures you no competition from your local magicians or clowns who only perform store-bought magic.

I did a coloring book routine along with mouth coils, vanishing crayons, etc. for a group of 5-7 year olds. They were stunned, and their older siblings (10+) were also surprised. The routine I do involves taking colors from the book, and I end up pulling a mouth coil out of my mouth at the end (the kids' favorite).

I was looking for new ideas older kids. The sticker idea is great, and I will probaly make that one.

For last year's library show I did a routine that sounds identical to Jove's. I made my own coloring books. I bought 30 identical books at walmart for $15 on clearance. I was able to give away an ungimmicked book and a box of crayons at the end of the routine. it really took the heat off the book and made the whole thing seem more magical.

Posted: Jul 1, 2010 1:04pm
The hardest part of putting the routine together was having my kids color in the gimmicked books. During the routine, the first time the book gets "colored" it is very sloppy and outside the lines and looks like a three year old may have gotten a hold of it. The second time the pages are colored in neatly and completely, but still appear to have been crayoned and not printed. This really helped the effect. It was hard to get my daughter to color "badly" we had to re-do to "bad" coloring twice before she understood that it was supposed to look REALLY bad. She made me pay her to color in the "good" book, she said her hand was tired. I couldn't do it myself...I never could color inside the lines.

The problem with the standard coloring book is that SO many performers use it - many who are not even "magicians". Also, it's available in a lot of kids' magic sets now.
I don't use it much, maybe once every couple of years now. Only for very young kids, and I ask them if they've seen it before? If they have, I'll do something a bit different with it, but I won't insult their intelligence, no matter how young they may be. There are a zillion other great effects out there, and this one (in my opinion) has reached rock bottom. You can practically hear the groans when a performer produces the book, and proceeds to deliver a slow and dull 20 minute presentation. All the kids know exactly what will happen, and it's a great way to lose half your audience very quickly. I've seen that happen, and prefer to offer things that are new and exciting.
Potty

Never underestimate the power of an effect because of price or frequency of use.

In the process of estate planning, I was emphatically reminded of the impact of the Coloring Book. In my new will I wanted to be especially sure that I provided items of personal property to the family members that valued them. What my daughter wanted from my magic props etc. was a Coloring Book that I had actually used in shows. It was the only magic item she really wanted. (For those of you who know me personally, you know that the Man Upstairs has been unbelievably kind to me. There are plenty of things others would want.) It definitely impressed me.

Never forget that the audience has its own value system. The Coloring Book is great magic!

Bob Sanders
Magic By Sander

I think we need to remember that there are still lots of kids who haven't seen a live magician (Max Webber in "Maximum Entertainment" reconned out about half). If your routine works then use it. I seem to alternate each year between a magical colouring or the colouring book using the same routine ideas (dressing up, magic wands etc).

One year I used the stamp album and the kids loved it. Tomorrow I do my third show for a client in a month so I'll use it then.

I've also made my own version of the Ledger of Life (Duane Laflin) after I couldn't fins it anywhere to buy.

Kids come to be entertained, some of the oldest tricks work well to do this.

It depends on your area, and competition. Here in Brighton, we now have something like 500 "entertainers" (mostly weekend warriors hoping to cash in on what they think is an "easy market".) And I suspect the vast majority of them use the Colouring Book. I prefer to be one of the small number of entertainers who don't offer "standard" effects in most of my shows.
I feel the same about quite a few popular kids show routines - for instance, I use the change bag very little, and when I do, I'm aware that (while kids may not know exactly how it works) the kids know that you put something in the bag, and it comes out different.
Potty

Wiz Kid Qua-Fiki came up with yet another way to work the "coloring theme" into your show with a variation of an idea by Edwin Hooper for Wild Card, of all things. You'll find it in Chapter 2 of Qua-Fiki's book "Go Fish Card Tricks" on my site. Basically he uses the wild card principle to show separate Go Fish playing cards that have line-art black and white drawings of fish, that then change to differently colored fish using the same coloring props, like the palette, vanishing crayons, color changing streamer, and so on.

Sure, he could have used the Svengali principle, but for one thing that's too much like the coloring book and for another, he wanted to be able to perform it with ultra jumbo cards, which is a little difficult using the Svengali principle.

Most kids have never seen Wild Card done, mainly because magicians are reluctant to perform card tricks for kids for obvious reasons, but the Go Fish Cards open up the audience for all kinds of packet card tricks that kids rarely see and "Wild Fish Coloring Cards" are just one example.