The Magic Coloring Book is a standard magician’s prop, disguised as a child’s coloring book. Turn the pages one way, and it appears to be a normal coloring book. Turn them another way, and the pictures are colored in. Now, you can use this by itself, but I tend to use it as part of a larger routine. For example, here is how I use it at a birthday party.
I pull out the magic coloring book, and flip through the pages, showing the coloring book filled in with colors, complaining that somebody else has filled in my coloring book. I ask the children, can they help me fix it? How? By magic! I explain that we’ll need to use my magic wand, and that I’ll need a volunteer to help me. I normally pick the birthday boy or girl as the first volunteer, and use a multiplying wand to hand to the child, while pulling the other wands back. The other children, of course, point out that I still have a wand in my hand, so I need another volunteer, etc. and keep doing this until I have six children up front with wands—it’s a wonderful audience participation bit, and makes the entire audience roll with laughter, as well as giving photo opportunities for the parents.
Depending on how many children are there, I’ll repeat it with other comedy magic wands, and if it’s a very large group, I’ll end with asking the kids still seated to reach into their pockets and pull out the magic wands that God put at the ends of their hands (i.e. their fingers), and have everyone point their magic wands at the coloring book, while saying the magic words “Happy birthday Maurice!” (or whatever the child’s name is), reminding them not to aim at me!, since I don’t want my colors washed away! Did it work? I peek inside the coloring book … would you kids like me to make some more balloon animals? NO! I peek again … How about a different magic trick? NO! So I now reveal the ‘normal’ coloring book, and thank the children and make sure they give themselves a big hand.
Something else I tend to do, either at the beginning or ending of the routine, is do a big, clown sneeze—and blow away everything in the book, leaving the pages blank! I hope you get as much mileage out of this simple clown prop as I do.