During the learning phase of my career as a kids entertainer, before I had performed a show, I spent a lot of time reading into the subject. I found some great books so thought I’d take the time to review them for those other people in my field deciding which books to buy. There are so many and it can be difficult to decide.

Firstly my favourite “Seriously Silly” How to Entertain Children with Magic and Comedy – by David Kaye. This is certainly the best place to start. It taught me the fundamentals required to entertain children. We can all rush to the magic store and buy a ton of magic tricks to fill an hours show unfortunately that’s not enough. This book teaches the art of how to perform these tricks with a string of fundamentals one can adapt each trick to. Like Silly Billy says ‘it’s the journey not the destination’. I also like the section on how to deal with potential troublesome situations and the one liners to deal with the know it all kids. I actually found these troublesome situations that the author said would happen arise in my first show! Being armed with the knowledge from this book made this and subsequent situations that little easier to deal with.

There is also an accompanying DVD to go with this. Get both! To see the great man goto work ties it all together. I really feel that if I hadn’t seen this DVD and read the book I wouldn’t be as good as I am today. These titles are sold in a lot of magic outlets and can be easily sourced via a google search. This title has helped me be a great childrens entertainer Andover.

Secondly, an ebook from a fellow British magician Stephen Ablett. His book ‘The Childrens Entertainers Guide 2012’ has been a great help to me. Here’s a guy who has really poured everything into this book. I imagine some people write a book quickly to satisfy the publisher and to see the money to roll in as fast as possible, but not Stephen. He took many years to write this and from reading this it is evident. Put simply it covers everything. There are so many little things I just wouldn’t have thought about that the book covers. Right down to small things such as reverse park when you arrive at venue so that when you leave you don’t potentially knock a child down. He covers a lot of business aspects too such as contracts, payments, legal advice and whole host of others. It’s also good for discovering where to get things from such as costumes and other useful products. You can buy this book from his website www.amazingstephen.co.uk

I’m still reading other books in this area and always looking for new suggestions. If anyone has any suggestions of other good titles I may be interested to read then pleas shout below in the comments.