By Elaine Rassel
Wednesday, June 15, Jonathan May, better known as Mr. Magic, stopped off at the Marcus Public Library to an audience of excited kids (and some adults, also!) to give his magic presentation. I must state that to report on a magician is one of my hardest to do! The magician is so good that it is impossible to explain what he has done magically.
This year’s Summer Programs are in coordination with “Read Beyond the Beaten Path”. However, this program was not about reading but on concentrating on what the magician is doing and trying to figure out “why”!
Mr. Magic began by asking his young audience how many had every seen a magic show. Not many had. Then he asked if they had ever seen him before? No. Well, he informed them that he was five years old when he began to be interested in magic and just maybe one of these kids would become interested also.
He pulled out a long length of rope. How could he make it shorter? He took a pair of scissors and cut off a length. Now he had two ropes, right? But, he didn’t want two ropes, just one rope. So with a little magic, he held the two ends together and WOW, all of a sudden he had one long rope again!
Time to get out the balls he had in a box. He threw a red ball out into the area where the kids were sitting. He had another red ball and wrapped this ball into a checkered scarf. He asked someone to throw back the first red ball to him. Now he put this ball in with the other red ball. Then he kept wrapping the scarf until it was a very small scarf. Now it was time to get the red balls back. He shook the scarf and we found that there were no red balls that came out of it. Where were they? He opened up a can he had on a small table, and out came the two red balls. How had they gone from the very small wrapped up scarf to a can that was not near where Mr. Magic was? That was Magic at work!
He asked for a helper. Of course, all the hands went up! A boy was chosen and given a card to write his name on. Then he took the card and put it in a deck of cards and laid them on a table. He went into a box and pulled out another deck of cards. What did he find in this deck but the card the boy had written his name on! How did it get in this box?
He pulled out six big rings out of a bag. He put the rings on one of his arms and asked us how many rings were there. There were six. Then he asked for a couple more helpers. He began to throw the rings up in the air. He threw one to the girl helper and another one to the boy helper. How many rings were on his arm? There were six but how did his two helpers each get a ring if there were only six rings to begin with? He had the helpers put their ring on his arm with the other six rings. Then he had us count them again. Now there were six rings again. What happened to the two rings his helpers had put on his arm?
Time for three more helpers. He had one boy hold a tube that he would be blowing through. He had a yellow ball. The girl in the middle held a orange ball. The girl on the other end held a green ball. He pulled out an apple from a bag and took out the core so we could see through the apple.
He had the boy with the tube blow put the yellow ball in the tube and as he blew it out, the girl in the middle got a “green ball” and the girl on the far end got a yellow ball and the boy blowing through the tube got an orange ball. How did these different colored balls get out of the hands they were in and into another helper’s hands? It was magic!
What about the apple? What magic trick was going to happen to the apple that we could see through? He held it up and we couldn’t see through it at all. The core was back in it but how did this happen. No one had seen the core going back.
Mr. Magic gave his helpers each a large paper bill (I didn’t see which person was on the front of the bill) for helping him.
Mr. Magic was really a good magician! He was so good that it was impossible to explain just what happened in his acts.
Next Wednesday, June 22 the Blank Park Zoomobile from Des Moines will be stopping off at the Library at 1:30 p.m. Come and see what the Zoo brought with them. See you then!