101 Magic Tricks V481

Continuing in the style that made the "Now you See it, Now you don't" series of books so valuable for the reader, Bill discusses a series of platform tricks with accompanying hand drawn illustrations by Frank Daniel. This is the system he used to such great effect with illustrator Barry Ross in his other books to show the intricacies of sleight of hand, the drawings were able to show details that would be covered up or obscured in photos. Unlike his other books, which were long on method and short on tricks, this book has a great many tricks often with little thought to the routining of them. And at only 101 tricks he seems at times to be reaching, and missing in the quest to include something useful. I can only recommend about half the book, but in that half is some great classics of magic explained in an easy to follow and understandable manner. The format of the book with its many drawings is useful for but a few tricks (most notably the linking rings). While with many of the others the illustration seem to only waste page space, but then we might have been treated to more tricks like "relit" which is simply the relighting of a just blown out candle by having the flame of a match travel down the smoke.

Continuing in the style that made the "Now you See it, Now you don't" series of books so valuable for the reader, Bill discusses a series of platform tricks ( quite a few can't be done with ordinary objects i.e. the linking rings and the Chinese wands to name two ) with accompanying hand drawn illustrations by Frank Daniel. This is the system he used to such great effect with illustrator Barry Ross in his other books to show the intricacies of sleight of hand, the drawings were able to show details that would be covered up or obscured in photos. Unlike his other books, which were long on method and short on tricks, this book has a great many tricks often with little thought to the routining of them. And at only 101 tricks he seems at times to be reaching, and missing in the quest to include something useful. I can only recommend about half the book, but in that half is some great classics of magic explained in an easy to follow and understandable manner. The format of the book with its many drawings is useful for but a few tricks (most notably the linking rings). While with many of the others the illustration seem to only waste page space, but then we might have been treated to more tricks like "relit" which is simply the relighting of a just blown out candle by having the flame of a match travel down the smoke.