Comedy magician Mac King trades wands for words during Magical Literacy Tour

The magic words at Mac King’s Magical Literacy Tour aren’t “abracadabra” but rather “read more books.”

In March, King, a Summerlin resident, visited four elementary schools — Hollingsworth, 1776 E. Ogden Ave.; Bunker, 6350 Peak Drive; Thomas, 1560 E. Cherokee Lane; and Thorpe, 1650 Patrick Lane — for Nevada Reading Week, which was March 2-6. This is the fifth year in a row that King has presented the Magical Literacy Tour.

On March 4, the Strip comedy magician, who regularly performs at Harrah’s Las Vegas, was at Bunker Elementary School.

Beverly Mathis, director of literacy for The Public Education Foundation, was setting up books on the stage steps before the assembly.

“Mac King is fabulous, and we know how he motivates children to read,” Mathis said. “There’s a little book by Dr. Seuss, and the title is ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go!’, and just think about that. Children can go anywhere they want, even though they’re right here at Bunker Elementary School. Reading opens up the world.”

Principal Pauline Mills said stories from successful people “touch the hearts of our kids. It helps them see that there’s a lot more out there, that they have to seize the opportunities.”

King said he liked performing at schools even though it’s not his usual audience. He said children were good for trying out new tricks, as they are a forgiving audience.

“It’s hard doing magic for kindergartners and first-graders, you know?” he said. “They kind of believe it; they believe it’s real.”

The first assembly was for third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. As they filed in, they all had eager faces.

Alexia Cebaloos, 10, said she likes reading mystery books because they’re “really fun to read.”

Ryan Allard, 9, recalled upgrading from books for little children and said, “Picture books, after a while, bored me, so I started reading chapter books; they were really deep and exciting.”

King began the show with a rope trick, seeming to snip a rope with scissors only to have it form a continuous loop, then appear to be cut perfectly in half, until one noticed the ends were different lengths. Some of the “ta da” moments had the children missing the nuances.

“You weren’t watching carefully,” King cautioned them. “I’ll start over.”

He asked the children to count aloud as he snipped at the rope, saying, “If I cut it in half, that’s two pieces. If I cut them in half again, that’s …?”

When he got to cutting eight pieces in half, the children called out multiple answers, and he hesitated, then shrugged.

“We’ll just call it a bunch of little pieces,” King said.

He read a story of a mean teacher who turned bad kids into apples on her desk. The children tricked the teacher until she was the only apple on the desk. Another teacher walked in and realized he was hungry. He picked up the apple and ate it.

The audience reacted with a collective “Eww!”

King used his signature Cloak of Invisibility to magically transfer a number of playing cards from a girl’s pocket to a boy’s.

To cure hiccups, King collapsed a paper bag on his head and was suddenly headless. Before anyone could figure it out, he whipped off the crushed bag and told the kids they were each getting a gift.

How did the literacy tour come to be?

“I started doing a few school assemblies when I first started at Harrah’s,” said King, “and I started seeing libraries in Las Vegas and thought, ‘Maybe we can get some more books in there.’ When I was a kid, I checked out a book about magic — ‘Tricks Any Boy Can Do’ — from my school library, and it literally changed my life.”

Each student got a free book, courtesy of a book drive at Savers of Las Vegas, the YMCA of Southern Nevada, Egg Works/Egg & I, The Toy Box and Splashville that netted 3,500 books.

“Some of these kids, it’s the only book they’ve ever owned,” King said. “And that’s just appalling. But, for them, it’s like Christmas.”

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.