The Magic Coloring Book Review: Does It Really Work?

I know what you’re thinking. The Magic Coloring Book? Isn’t that the magic trick that uses a children’s coloring book? Why should we be interested in that?

All valid points. However, in today’s magic review I’m going to try and explain just what it is about this simple looking trick that makes it such a personal favorite of mine.

Product: The Magic Coloring Book

Difficulty: Very easy (8+)

Best place to buy: Amazon

What is The Magic Coloring Book?

The Magic Coloring book is a very simple visual magic trick. The magician first presents an ordinary coloring book to the audience full of black and white drawings. He slowly flicks through all the pages, ensuring the audience can see that none of the drawings have been colored in yet.

The magician closes the book fairly and gives it just one tap with his wand. Without making any funny moves or using any sleight of hand, he reveals that the book is suddenly full of color. All the drawings are, impossibly, completely colored.

But the trick isn’t over yet.

After the magician lets the audience inspect the magical coloring’s, he closes the book. Yet again, he taps it with his wand. At this point, the audience are expecting the color to disappear- it seems the most logical outcome.

But to everyone’s surprise, as the book opens we see that all the pages are completely blank! No color, no drawings, no nothing!

After this incredible end to the trick, the magician simply sits back and soaks up the applause.

Okay, that may seem a little bit of an exaggeration, but seriously, don’t hesitate picking this trick up. You won’t regret it.

Where can I buy this trick?

This trick is usually available on Amazon.

How hard is this trick?

Okay, here’s the even better bit. This trick is one of the easiest magic tricks, ever. Honestly. It’s even easier than Cardtoon!

The method is incredibly simplistic.

This is great, because it means you have more time to work on your presentation; the trick might be easy, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to prepare hard. Try to think of a possible story you could work into it, something to make it more interesting and capture people’s attention.

Are there any negatives to this trick?

Of course, no trick is perfect and so there are definitely a couple of things I would mention as slight drawbacks to the effect. The biggest downside is that you can’t hand the book out for inspection after the trick. Naturally, you will have people ask to see the book, so I would suggest a couple of methods for avoiding being caught out.

Method 1: Move on to another trick.

This method only works if you have a couple of effects handy, but it is a good way of steering clear of pressure around the coloring book. Once you have finished the trick, give it a moment or two for your audience to react, and then quickly pull out your next effect, putting the coloring book away as you do so.

This way, before people have the chance to start asking about seeing the book, you tell them something along the lines of “and if you liked that trick, then you’ll love this trick! Watch as I take the two aces (and so on).”

Method 2: Do it slowly

While you are doing the trick, make sure everytime something magical happens, you pause and allow them more than enough time to get a good look at the pages. Flick through the book nice and slowly so they have no reason to feel anything is being hidden from them.

This should lessen the chances of the audience clamoring to see it afterwards. If you want to, you could even say at one point “Now make sure you get a good look; the drawings are really gone, aren’t they? I don’t want you asking to see the book again later!”

Method 3: Have a spare book that can be handed out

This one requires you to have an extra copy of the Magic Coloring Cook, only this one is completely full of regular blank pages. Have this copy stored somewhere safe, like in a backpack or whatever you use to carry around your magic. After you finish the trick and present the impossibly blank book to the audience, quickly put the real Magic Coloring Book in your backpack/bag.

That way, if no one asks to see it, you’re fine, and if people do ask to see it, you can simply pull out your extra copy of the Magic Coloring Book full of blank pages and pass it around.

How do you make this? The good news is, you can actually purchase ‘blank’ versions of the Magic Coloring Book that are made to look EXACTLY like the regular book but are full of blank pages. This one can be inspected by the audience as much as they want.

A great example of the Magic Coloring Book in performance:

I couldn’t end this article without including this performance of the Magic Coloring Book including a certain Eddie Redmayne, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bryan Cranston and Graham Norton.

What’s interesting is that Eddie Redmayne actually performs this trick a little differently to the commonly accepted way. He begins with the blank pages rather than ending with them, which creates a nice little ladder of effects- from the drawing appearing to the color appearing within the drawings.

This demonstrates just how flexible this trick is; the way you present it is completely up to you. It’s worth pointing out that Eddie’s idea of allowing other people to perform the magical action such as blowing on the book is a nice touch too, so if you can incorporate the spectators in this trick go for it.

The Magic Coloring Book is often advertised as a magic trick for kids; but I think it work just as well on adults in the hands of a capable magician! Once you understand the mechanics of the trick, you even begin to see how it could be applied to other areas of magic too.