Found this little treasure in a Flea Market under a pile of Smurf and Pound Puppies books for a whopping seventy-five cents! I was leaving the store empty handed until I noticed a pile of kids books under an old beat up table. Going through the stack of 80's fluff, I didn’t expect to find anything worth buying. I was surprised that on the bottom of the stack was a nifty magic book from the 1960's. Magic trick books are always cool, but this one was even better because it was Spooky Magic! Cool beans! I didn’t have to leave the store empty handed.The best part about Spooky Magic is the cover since the magic tricks inside are not really that spooky. The trick names are kind of fun like The Spirit Hand, The Wandering Ring, The Spirit in the Bottle and The Floating Body. I love the title font! The book was written by Larry Kettelkamp and illustrated by William Meyerriecks. This one is a 1966 7th printing published by Scholastic Books.
Here's a couple of pages from the book -
Spooky Magic Page
Spooky Magic Page
Spooky Magic Page
Indeed a beautiful cover.
ReplyDeleteThe multi-colored wacky typeface (with eyes) is unbeatable.
I have a more recent (70s maybe) "Spooky Tricks" book from Schoolastic, but the cover is different. I wonder if there's any connection. Mine has the floating body trick too. Hmmm, now I need to dig it out.
It might be the same book. The first printing was from 1955 and I wonder if it had different cover art or not?
ReplyDeleteI had that book as a kid, same cover but I don't think it was from 1955 -- it'd be over 20 years old and it was in better shape than that. I loved it.
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