Magic Shop
Ooh, a good one. Here's what they'll see.
You hold up an ordinary pencil and say a magic word. It wobbles and bends in the middle, like it's made of rubber. Then you hand it straight over, and it's solid wood again.
Works by itself, or one simple move. It works the first try.
The Rubber Pencil. Hold a pencil loosely near one end and wiggle it up and down, and it looks bendy, like rubber. You can learn it in under a minute, and it works the very first try.
Magicians use secrets. Some secrets are hidden objects, some are special ways of holding things, and some are clever maths. The biggest secret of all is attention: a magician gets you to look at one thing while the secret happens somewhere else. Then they practise until it looks like nothing at all.
The words a magician says are called patter. Good patter tells a small story, asks the audience to help, and then goes completely quiet for one second at the magic moment. Every trick in this shop has magic words to say that you can copy or change.
More in Ask the Magician.
You hold up an ordinary pencil and say a magic word. It wobbles and bends in the middle, like it's made of rubber. Then you hand it straight over, and it's solid wood again. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 5 to 9 (grades K–3rd), takes 1 minute to learn, and needs one thing you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone.
Your eyes can't keep up with a fast wobble, so they smear the pencil into a curve. That's the whole thing, and it's why magicians have called this one the rubber pencil for about a hundred years.
“This pencil came out of a drawer at the Peabody Magic Shop, so it isn't ordinary wood. Watch what happens when I say… Wobble-ah-kazam!”
If it doesn't look bendy, loosen your grip and try again more slowly. If somebody asks to have a go, let them: this one is famous, and everybody should know it.
🌈 Transformation. Something changes into something else. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.
The skill it teaches: Patter: what you say. A trick is a story, not a thing that happens. Perform it and it counts towards the Showstopper badge.
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