The Little Free Library Book Test
/Here’s an idea that came in from reader Colin R…
I had an idea the other day while on a walk concerning any kind of book test that requires anything prepared and a way to do it casually. But in a very specific situation: taking your friends on a walk around your neighborhood, assuming your neighborhood contains a Little Free Library.
The idea is simple, you would take the largest books in the "library" and pick one. You create a crib sheet in the back of that book containing a list of all the other books in the library and the word that is on the force page(or the crib could also contain page numbers if you wanted to use different pages to have it be repeatable for whatever reason).
You take the person on a walk to the Little Free Library, stop and mention how cute/interesting you think they are, and go into the Hoy Book Test by letting the spectator pick a book, free selection. You pretend to search for a moment and then take the crib book. If they pick your crib book, you say that you'll take that one and have them pick another one.
Obviously there are problems with books being taken out of the library over time, including possibly your crib book. You could check it every couple weeks and update your sheet, and if you get there with a friend and the crib is gone you can just go into the impromptu handling. Or you could have a backup crib on your phone and first say you want to take a picture of the little library for instagram or to send it to your sister because she loves them.
I love ideas like this.
I’m not someone who needs to acquire more tricks, but I’m always looking for new ways to incorporate tricks into my interactions, and this works perfectly with the ultracasual style that I prefer.
Little Free Libraries are more common than you might think. At least, they’re plentiful around me. If there are some around you, you should be able to find them here: Little Free Library Finder.
Colin originally sent me this idea about two and a half months ago, and I set it up in one of the Little Free Libraries near me. (I guess the word “free” isn’t necessary. All libraries are free, pretty much. If you think you’re in a library, but you’re paying for the books, there’s a good chance you’re in Barnes & Noble.)
Here are some tips I have if you’d like to try this yourself.
Get hold of an unfashionable book for your crib book. I picked up the autobiography of Lee Iacocca at a thrift store and used that. It might be a great book, and I know it was a best seller back in 1984. But these days it’s likely going to stick around in one of these libraries for quite some time. You don’t want something too dull/obscure, (e.g., “A Field Guide to Northwest Conifers”) because whoever runs the little library might toss that away as being uninteresting.
If you’re going put a crib in a book, you might as well prep it some more. I trim down the force page (or the page before or after the force page, depending on how you riffle it) a millimeter or so. This means I can flip to that page automatically without holding a break and without doing a miscall.
You might feel like a weirdo if you’re standing in front of one of these libraries and looking into every book and taking notes about what’s on page 225 or whatever. Or, at least, I felt like a weirdo doing that. So instead I just put my phone on video mode and stuck it in the breast pocket of my shirt. Then I just let that record while I removed each book and flipped to page 225. Later, when I was home, I watched the video and transcribed the first “interesting” word on each page into the crib book.
I stop by the library once a week to take note of any new books in there. I ignore children’s books or anything too thin. Generally there around 15 books total to account for.
In my experience, there doesn’t tend to be a ton of turnover with the books in these libraries, unless, perhaps, you’re in a very high-trafficked area. In which case this pre-set version of the Hoy test might not be feasible.
To reiterate, the handling is this: You ask them to grab any book. “Make it a fairly large one, with a lot of words,” cuts out the kid’s books. If they take the force book, take it from them and say, “And now grab one for yourself too.” If they don’t take the force book, just say, “And I’ll take one too,” and get it yourself.
Flip to the short page to force that page number on your spectator. Allow them to verify the page number.
Send the person 20 feet away. Tell them to open their book to the random page and read the first word on that page. “If it’s a short word— ‘and’ or ‘the’ or something—go to the first longer, more interesting word.”
As you tell them to open their book, open your own. Just to the back page where your crib is. And as you tell them to take al look at the word, you get a look in your crib of what they’re looking at.
You can now read their mind. Or have them whisper the word to their dog and then have the dog send the message to you. Or make a game of “figuring out the word” before you get back home. Or whatever you want to do with that information.
This is a situation where an object in the environment justifies the procedure. If I ask you to look at a word in. book so I can read your mind, that might seem contrived. Why do I need a book involved? That needs to be solved presentationally. But if we’re walking around and stumble on this library, then I don’t need to justify the book, really. The justification is that we’re here at this little library, let’s try something interesting using these books.
This is my kind of thing. I like the option of having this trick available along one of my usual walking routes. And I like “tending” to it and keeping it updated every week or so. That sort of thing is more fun than practicing a bottom deal or something like that for me.
Magic for an evening stroll isn’t a very large subset of magic, but it’s one that I’ve always had an interest in and enjoy performing.
