Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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The first time I recall coming in contact with magic of any sort, I was a young child who had just walked across the street to a little girl's birthday party. Upon my arrival, a smiling clown greeted me in the driveway by holding up a flower that proceeded to squirt a stream of blue ink all over my brand new white dress shirt. Before anyone in attendance had a chance to explain this bizarre and seemingly most unfriendly of welcomes, I ran home crying to my mother who, after all the ink had finally disappeared, persuaded me to return to the festivities.

As Sid Fleischman revealed a decade ago in his autobiography, his own childhood fascination with magic was neither a scary experience nor a passing fad. In fact, upon my meeting him at a book convention years ago, the first thing he did (No, he didn't spray me with blue ink!) was to take a look at my name badge and proceed to tell me about the theater that used to exist in downtown Sebastopol where he once appeared as a magician back in the '30s.

Therefore, I cannot imagine a more likely suspect for telling young people the tale of Harry Houdini--the most renowned magician and escape artist of the modern age--than the Abracadabra Kid himself. Having been inspired as a youngster by the legendary tales of Houdini, Sid Fleischman accomplishes three significant feats with his latest piece of writing.

Fleischman tells a great story:

"He launched a great buzz when he arranged to be locked up in Cell No. 2 on Murderers' Row of the South Wing of the United States Jail in Washington, D.C. What was so special about Cell No. 2? It was not only that the narrow door stood recessed deeply into the massive brick wall. It was not only that the lock had been installed around the corner, out of reach--some three feet away. It was that a famous assassin had been a resident of the cell for a year and been unable to slip away. He was bewhiskered Charles Guiteau, who had gone down in history as the man who shot and killed President James A. Garfield in 1881.
"Houdini was stripped naked and searched. His clothing was locked in another empty cell. Then he was left alone, except for the eight prisoners languishing in their cells along Murderers' Row.
"Wrote the warden, 'Mr. Houdini, in about two minutes, managed to escape from the cell and then broke into the cell in which his clothing was locked up.'
"At that point in his escape, Houdini 'was seized with a whimsical idea.' When he returned to the warden's office, now fully dressed, he said, 'I let all of your prisoners out.' If the warden were given to heart attacks, he would have had one then. Before he could sound the alarm, Houdini added, 'But I locked them all in again.' Indeed he had--in different cells!"

As I first learned as a little kid when, after seeing the Disney movie Bullwhip Griffin, I tracked down the book BY THE GREAT HORN SPOON!, on which the movie was based, Sid Fleischman is an extraordinary storyteller. Four decades and fifty books later, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, this remains true.

Fleischman enjoys language and uses it creatively to make the story even more enjoyable. For example:

"Houdini's sudden fame was written in vanishing ink."

"Now that he was back on his home soil, it was time to kick up some dust."

"Today's sensation is tomorrow's burnt toast."

Fleischman conveys important information literacy lessons (such as comparing information sources to determine what is fact) through his demythifacation of the stories of Ehrich Weiss, a.k.a. Harry Houdini:

"In his deathbed, Rabbi Weiss asked his magician son to assume the responsibility of caring for his mother, Cecilia. The scene has the solid ring of myth."

"Mark Twain once confessed that he could 'remember anything, whether it happened or not.' "

"But did it happen? Is it true?
"It's true to the Houdini legend. It's as memorable a prop in the Houdini biography as the cherry tree in George Washington's. If it didn't happen, it was an oversight."

Fleischman's extensive research, coupled with his own professional background in the field, is well-utilized in separating the truth of Houdini from the legend. And because of Fleischman's great storytelling abilities paired with his creative use of language, readers will find themselves consistently fascinated by both the story of Houdini and the stories behind the legend. While Fleischman, as part of the magician's fraternity, refuses to reveal the secrets and details of Houdini's escapes, he does reward the astute reader with an annotated bibliography containing sources for just this information.

Sid Fleischman has assembled a terrific collection of photographs for inclusion in the book. Several were given him by Houdini's widow, who Fleischman came to know when he was a young aspiring magician. Some photos are essential to the tale, such as when the legend-making that Houdini actively practiced to advance his own career is graphically portrayed in the story concerning a picture of Houdini and Teddy Roosevelt.

I, myself, am far too happy to be alive with distant memories of all the dangerous stunts I survived during my teenage years to get a thrill out of imagining myself locked in manacles and tossed into a freezing river, dangling off the ledge of a skyscraper upside down in a straitjacket, or threading needles with my tonsils. I nevertheless was glued to the pages of this book. For younger readers this is an exciting and intriguing informational book they'll be sharing with their friends, and maybe an inspiration for attempting the insane and/or the impossible.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com