Harry Houdini (The First Names Series) , livre ebook

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101 pages

English

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Discover the man behind the magic and see how Houdini pulled off his most daring escapes Before Harry Houdini (1874–1926) became the greatest magician in the world, he was just little Ehrich Weisz, a Hungarian-born immigrant who moved to America with his family and performed stage tricks for a little extra cash. He started off with card tricks and then eventually began performing the escape acts that would make him famous. Known for his daring and death-defying illusions, he would do some of the greatest tricks ever: escaping from a milk can, being buried alive, and being locked inside a crate and thrown into a river. He conquered each of these seemingly impossible feats and showed the world the power of a little magic. Fun, fast-paced, and highly illustrated, Harry Houdini tells the story of the curious boy who became the world’s greatest magician and reveals how Houdini did some of his most stunning escapes. It includes a timeline, glossary, and index.

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États-Unis

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	13 août 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683356264
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	6 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0314€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

All the facts in First Names: Harry Houdini have been carefully checked and are accurate to the best of our knowledge. Many of the stories rely on people s memories and newspaper reports, and sometimes it s impossible to separate the truth from the legend, but we have brought Harry back to life as faithfully as we can.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-3862-3
eISBN 978-1-6833-5626-4
Text copyright 2019 Kjartan Poskitt
Illustrations copyright 2019 Geraint Ford
Book design by Max Temescu
2019 as UK edition. First published in 2019 by David Fickling Books Limited
Published under license from David Fickling Books Limited. Published in 2019 by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018966485
Abrams Books for Young Readers are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Abrams is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
C ONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION
1 W HO W AS H ARRY?
2 H ARRY AND THE H EADLESS M AN
3 H ARRY AND THE O THER H OUDINIS
4 H ARRY H ITS THE B OTTOM
5 H ARRY G ETS A B REAK
6 H ARRY H EADS A BROAD
7 T HE H OUSE T HAT H ARRY B UILT
8 H ARRY G ETS D ANGEROUS
9 H ARRY S D EATH -D EFYING M YSTERIES!
10 H ARRY H ANGS U PSIDE D OWN
11 T HE S EA M ONSTER AND O THER S ENSATIONS!
12 H ARRY AND THE S PIRITS
T IMELINE
G LOSSARY
S ELECT B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX OF S EARCHABLE T ERMS
I NTRODUCTION
July 7, 1912, New York, New York
Harry stood on a barge on New York s East River. Over on the quayside, a massive crowd had gathered to watch what he was about to do.

Anybody might have thought Harry was going for a swim, but then one of his assistants clamped his wrists in a pair of handcuffs.
Hey, Mr. Houdini, are those your own cuffs? asked one reporter.
Yeah, I bet they ve got a secret catch to release them! said another.
Harry gave them a cold stare. Police cuffs, he said in his German accent. Then he shoved his hands toward the reporters. You want to try them?

The handcuffs were locked tight and looked heavy.
The reporter shook his head!
Harry flashed a cheeky smile, then stepped back. He had a set of leg irons locked around his ankles.
Harry stared into the water. Surely he wasn t going in? The weight of all that metal would drag him straight to the bottom! And just in case that wasn t bad enough, three strong men then lifted him into a wooden box and nailed the lid down .
What on earth was Harry going to do?
The barge crane hoisted the box up above the deck, then swung it out over the river. The crowd on the quayside had been getting louder, first gasping then groaning . . . but suddenly they fell silent .

For a moment the box hung in space, then the crane started letting the rope out. The box hit the surface of the water then sunk down. A few last bubbles of air came up as it disappeared deep into the darkness.
Screams came from the crowd on the quayside. People at the back pushed forward, trying to see what was happening, and the ones at the front struggled not to fall over the edge!
All around the barge, reporters were scribbling away madly. Why didn t the men working the ropes pull the box back up? In fact, they were just letting more and more rope out! Didn t they know Harry was down there?
A whole minute passed, but then the crowd began to cheer. People pointed to a spot further down the river. There was something splashing about in the water. It was man and he was waving.
It was Harry! He d escaped from the box!
Thank goodness he was safe, because there was no doubt about it-Harry could easily have died!
1 W HO W AS H ARRY?
If you wanted to describe Harry in one word, HUNGRY would be a good one. When he was growing up, he was often hungry for food, but more importantly he was always hungry for adventure, challenges, fame, and success . He refused to let anything or anyone beat him.
Harry always said he was American, but this wasn t true. He was actually born in the city of Budapest on March 24, 1874 . . . and Budapest is the capital of Hungary. So you could say he was a hungry Hungarian .

(Harry and his mom didn t speak in English; they always spoke to each other in German.)
H OW D ID H ARRY E ND U P IN A MERICA?
Harry s dad was Mayer Samuel Weisz. He was an important Jewish scholar and lawyer, so he was known as Rabbi Weisz.

Harry s mom was a small lively woman, twelve years younger than the rabbi and named Cecilia. When Harry was a baby, he already had older brothers plus a stepbrother from his dad s first marriage.
At first, life was good, but when Harry was just one year old, his father suddenly ran off!

Nobody knows for sure why he went, but according to one story, Rabbi Weisz had been challenged to a duel by a Hungarian prince, and had ended up killing him!

It was three years before the rabbi could arrange for his family to join him. In the meantime Cecilia struggled to raise the boys on her own, and that included baby Theodore who was born after his father had gone. Little Harry was just starting to walk and talk; he could see how hard his mom had to work to look after them all, and he adored her for it. Whenever he screamed she would hug him and he would calm down so quickly it was almost like magic.
Of course she hugged the other boys too, but they soon grew out of it. Harry never did-even as a grown-up!
Harry s dad sent letters home from the United States, and eventually, when Harry was four, the family sailed across the ocean to join him. They all crammed into the cheapest section of the steamship Frisia , sleeping on wooden benches and eating disgusting food. Harry and baby Theodore clung on to their mom for thirteen long days and nights as the boat rumbled and rocked its way to America.
When they arrived, it must have seemed like an alien world. The language was strange, the buildings were all modern, and everything was faster and louder. Even their name changed, because as soon as they got off the boat the officials decided the z in Weisz looked too foreign and so it became Weiss. They finally settled down with their father in the state of Wisconsin by the Great Lakes, in a place called Appleton.

And in some ways, it was where Harry was born, because Appleton was where little Ehrich started to turn into Harry Houdini .
2 H ARRY AND THE H EADLESS M AN
By the time Harry was eight years old, he had five brothers and a baby sister and life hadn t gotten any easier. Harry s mom never managed to learn English, so the family all spoke in German. (Harry never lost his German accent!) Harry s dad struggled to find work, and on one awful day, Harry s baby sister, Carrie Gladys, had an accident that left her almost blind .
Money was so short that Harry didn t go to school much. Instead he did anything he could to bring home a few extra coins. He ran errands, polished shoes, sold newspapers, and he even begged on the streets.
Sometimes he d be joined by his little brother Theodore, whose family nickname had become Deshi for short and then Dash. Harry and Dash were best friends for life. One afternoon they turned a disaster into an adventure, when they proudly headed home with $2 in change. Dash had insisted on carrying it.

When they got home, all that was left was one tiny nickel. Cecilia was almost in tears. Harry couldn t bear it, so he grabbed Dash and ran to a florist s, where they bought a single flower and sold it to a stranger for a dime.
They went back in to buy two more flowers, sold those, and went back again until they had enough money to replace the $2 they had lost!
Harry was always desperate to cheer his mom up and help her forget how hard their life was. Sometimes, if he had money to hand over, he hid the coins in his clothes and hair and made them appear by magic. The magic wasn t terribly clever. He might just ask his mom to shake him so the coins fell out, which made her laugh. Harry was discovering what it was like to entertain an audience and he loved it.
T HE R ED S TOCKINGS
By the time he was nine, Harry had started putting on a completely different sort of show for the family and their neighbors.

Harry was very athletic, and wanted to find out what he could make his body do. He was always fascinated by the circus acrobats who came to town, and so he taught himself to walk a tightrope . He had also seen a contortionist who could bend his body in strange ways and fit himself into a tiny box, so Harry tried that too! He even invented his own tricks, such as bending over backwards and picking up pins with his teeth. (And he claimed he could do the same trick with his eyelids!)

He spent so much time with the circus people that eventually they let him appear in a show and even paid him 35 cents, his first ever showbiz wages! It was enough to buy a bag of groceries and put a smile on his mom s face.
For hours every day, Harry would exercise and stretch and twist himself until his whole body became very strong and very bendy. He was actually dreaming of becoming a sportsman-a runner or a swimmer-but all this training would be vital for his escapes later on!
M AGIC F INGERS
Harry never let himself rest. Above all, he kept his hands busy. He found books in the library which taught him little bits of magic involving coins and cards. Harry would study these books through the night, practicing the tricks over and over again