"Addie never wanted to be ordinary." She danced onstage, rode an early bicycle ("the boneshaker"), sailed to America, married a magician and became part of the act onstage. When her husband Alexander died of a heart attack, Addie continued their magic show herself, even performing the dangerous bullet-catching trick.

Adelaide Hermann (1853-1932) wrote an unpublished manuscript, Sixty-Five Years of Magic, which she gave to a niece, and which was rediscovered by Margaret Steele, another stage magician, who published it in 2012.

The large trim size of the book and the pencil illustrations, digitally colored, combine to make a large, inviting "stage," with paper-doll-like figures framing or pointing readers' attention to the main action.

Exciting!

Secrets of the bullet-catching trick, revealed: https://mararockliff.com/bullet ( )

Really nice combination of showy typography and biography -- quite a straightforward and simply told bio of Adelaide Herrmann, but the book is anything but ordinary inside, as well. ( )

This review published by Brigham Young University's Children's Book and Media Review

Addie never wanted to be ordinary. Even though it shocks her family (and several other people), she went on the stage and performed as a dancer and bicyclist. On her way to America, she met a man named Alexander, but he was known as the famous magician Herrmann the Great. They decide to get married and she joins him in his performances onstage doing magic and even getting shot out of a cannon. When her husband dies, she decides to take the show into her own hands and become the first woman magician. To get people to come, she does the very dangerous, potentially fatal bullet-catching trick.

Known as the Queen of Magic, Adelaide Herrmann shocked audiences as one of the first female magicians. Her story disappeared for many years, but recently her memoir has reappeared and this picture book was created to help tell her story. While it’s not a great introduction to magic and magicians, it does talk about the famous bullet-catching trick and a link at the back gives readers a place to go if they want to know how it is done. The book emphasizes a woman who does what she’s passionate about even when society tells her that she shouldn’t. The gorgeous illustrations reflect the styles of the time and pull in readers. More information about Addie and her life can be found in the back of the book. This beautiful book is a fun way to learn about a woman who took her own path to becoming one of the world’s first female magicians. ( )

Beautiful pictures. I had never heard of this magician and it was great to learn about a female magician from history. ( )

The little-known story of Adelaide Herrmann, who married a magician, Alexander Herrmann, and assisted him in his show for years. But upon his death, she carried on with the show and turned into a very successful magician in her own right. She performed for 65 years! Excellent author's note explains this, as well as how her autobiography was never published and the manuscript lost, until a modern woman magician, Margaret Steele, and magician-historian James Hamilton searched for it and published it in 2012, reintroducing the world to Adelaide. That was the main source for this book, along with two articles and emails with Steele. This is a GORGEOUS book, I absolutely adore the illustrations as well as learning about this early female magician pioneer. The pictures are big, bold, stylized, cartoony yet realistic (meaning, no outsized heads or caricatures) with white outlines around some characters to highlight them like paper-doll cutouts and frame the scenes. The illustrations are also all full-color, two-page spreads, big and bold like Adelaide, who never wanted to be ordinary--she wanted to AMAZE! and ASTONISH! and this picture book certainly does too. ( )