Kids Learn Magic Basics at ‘Sleight of Hand’ Workshop

Children at the Cockeysville Public Library learned the tricks of the magician’s trade at a “Sleight of Hand” workshop Saturday afternoon. The workshop, presented by professional magician Mike Rose, taught kids ages 10 to 17 basic, beginner magic tricks, all of which can be performed with the help of items found around the house, like string, a ring, dice, coins and marbles.

“Magicians never tell their secrets,” said Rose to the group of eight children. “Magicians do teach their secrets.”

Rose presented four different tricks, first demonstrating each one before handing out the items the kids needed to do the tricks on their own. And while the children there wanted to see some rather difficult and perhaps fictitious tricks—one girl asked excitedly, “Are you going to cut someone in half?”—Rose taught the techniques of sleight of hand, a type of magic where a person uses his or her hands to make the tricks happen.

Oftentimes, sleight of hand will involve subtle psychological tricks to fool the audience. For instance, Rose showed the kids how his eyes were always focused on the particular hand he wanted his audience to be looking at; he also demonstrated the “French Drop,” a technique dating back to the early 1800s and employed by magicians when they want to the audience to think they have taken an object out of one hand and transferred it to the other. Instead, the magician, using sleight of hand, makes it seem as if the object in question has transferred hands. In reality, the object is resting in the original hand, “dropped” by the magician into the palm of the hand, and then held in place between two fingers, hidden from the audience’s view.

Rose said that such a technique is also known as a “utility move” to magicians. The concept of pretending to take an object is an integral part of sleight of hand performance.

Chris Moon, 13, practiced his sleight of hand technique in front of the large group. Using one die, he first showed the group how the opposite sides of a six-sided die add up to number seven. Then, Moon showed the group that the numbers three and four are on exact opposite sides of the die. Finally, employing the sleight of hand techniques Rose had taught, Moon “stuck” an invisible fifth dot to the side of the die with four dots, and then inverted the die to show the group that side with four dots was now covered by five dots. An intricate twist of the index finger and the thumb achieved Moon’s desired result, and a successful trick.

(Rose insisted that all the details of each trick not be revealed.)

Rose, who studied at the University of Michigan, worked as a manager of a furniture store for seven months before being fired for consistently leaving early; Rose was cutting his days short to perform magic shows in the evening. Since then, he has been a practicing magician for about 20 years, and is now based out of Bel Air. He has been teaching these magic workshops at public libraries in the area for nearly two years.