Abracadabra! It’s going to be a spellbinding weekend at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum as it transforms itself into a palace of magic – a world of wizards.
It’s all in honor of that bespectacled kid you may have heard of: Harry Potter. And if you care to create a costume based on your favorite Potter character, all the better. There’ll be fashion shows all day, both days.
There’ll also be broomstick races, a lesson in “magical” animals like slimy frogs and slithering snakes, and a workshop on wand-making – dragon scales and Phoenix feathers provided.
And if it’s actual magic you’re after, you’re in luck. “Master Magician” Adam Blumenthal performs today and tomorrow.
Who, you may ask, is the Amazing Adam Blumenthal? Believe it or not, he’s a high school sophomore at The Dalton School in Manhattan. And though he’s all of 16 (he magically turns 17 on June 1), he’s been practicing his craft for a dozen years.
“I had a magician at one of my pre-K birthday parties – Adam “the Magician,” Blumenthal recalls. “The next year, when he came back, I asked my mom if she could have him teach us all a simple trick. And he did.”
In first grade, Blumenthal’s class was assigned a paper “on anything we wanted,” he says. It was followed by a field trip to a place that pertained to the paper.
“I wrote a little one-and-a-half page essay about magic. And then they took us to Tannen’s Magic Shop (24 W. 25th St., 2nd floor) for the trip.”
Blumenthal added a little magic presentation for his first-grade classmates. He was hooked, pursuing the world of illusion ever since.
Starting three years ago, the Manhattan teen began attending Tannen’s Magic Camp for a week each summer – at the New York Institute of Technology’s Central Islip campus. That fall he attended an annual magicians’ convention Tannen’s holds at Kutsher’s Country Club in the Catskills.
“I’ve always liked performing,” says Blumenthal, adding, “another strong interest of mine has always been in the circus.” He goes to a circus camp as well.
“And I think it was always being amazed by magic,” he says, which attracted him to the field. “I guess between the idea of just always being amazed by magicians and the ability to amaze other people has been a great experience.”
None of Blumenthal’s high-school classmates think his predilection to magic is weird, he says. “I guess I’ve been into it for so long, as my sister puts it, she doesn’t care any more because originally I was so bad at it and she was forced to watch so much that now that I’m good at it, she’s sort of lost interest.”
He says his friends are more responsive – “Girls, especially.
“I’m a very shy person, so it does help me be more outgoing,” he admits.
Blumenthal performs at school, where he tries out new acts, and also does the party circuit – for kids, law firms and anyone else who asks.
You can watch this Master of Magic make his fluffy white rabbit, Merlin, disappear – and hopefully reappear – at 2 today and 3 tomorrow.
In between, you can participate in the Wizard’s Hat Ceremony both days from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Then grab a map and join a scavenger hunt from anywhere from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. – there’s a magical goblet hidden somewhere in the museum.
You can also design a racing broomstick, go face-to-face with a frog, and invent a new flavored jellybean.
Who needs Hogwarts? This weekend, the magic’s in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, at 145 Brooklyn Ave., at St. Mark’s Avenue, Crown Heights, is open weekends from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. Suggested admission is $4. For more information, visit http://www.brooklynkids.org or call (718) 735-4400.
