South Shore Joeys
Book Reviews




"Clown Skits for Everyone"
by Happy Jack Feder

© 1991 Meriwether Publishing, Ltd.This is a collection of skits, some for single and some for multiple clowns. Skip the opening chapter "The Road to Clown Town" (it's weak and a really poor exmple of clown makeup; it's also not indicative of the quality of the skits) and jump right to the skits. Honestly, I haven't finished this entire book but kind of picked through what looked interesting (hey, that's how I use a resource book :-).

For example: Pool Ball Prankster and Unbalancing Water Balloons are variations on established skits with a new presentation method. Everywhere props are used their construction is also discussed. I like a lot of what I read here and would recommend this book for anyone doing skits.

This book is in the Joeys library.




"Now you see it, now you don't"
by William Tarr and Barry Ross

© 1976 William Tarr and Barry Ross. This is a book of over 200 lessons in sleight of hand by Bill Tarr.

I've had this book out from the library a couple times and it's been on my buy list for a while. This book focuses on the sleight of hand aspects of magic tricks. Loaded with illustrations and descriptions of how to do the tricks long associated with magic; i.e. card, coin, and ball tricks. He also includes flourishes, and gimmicks where appropriate that aren't really magic but go along way towards convincing your audience that you are a master of magic.

This was just recently added to Richard's Memorial Library collection with a call number of 793.8 T176. There is more than one copy of this in the library system.