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Is sid fleischman still alive

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Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini | Jewish Book Council

Har­ry Houdini’s show­man­ship made him a stand­out among magi­cians. Author Sid Fleis­chman uses the same tech­nique to stand out in the crowd­ed field of Hou­di­ni biogra­phies. Escape! cap­tures read­ers with its flam­boy­ant vocab­u­lary, humor, insid­er under­stand­ing, won­der­ful pho­tographs with excel­lent cap­tions and a clear­ly stat­ed theme which shapes the details of an excit­ing life. Fleis­chman orga­nizes this rags-to-rich­es tale around Houdini’s shame­less van­i­ty that sup­port­ed his ​“mega­phone self-pro­mo­tion” of his self-made leg­end: shar­ing that Hou­di­ni doc­tored facts and pho­tographs. Fleis­chman ana­lyzes Houdini’s fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, eval­u­ates his career and last­ing fame, and explains them to young­sters as part human flaw, part the need to escape anti-Semi­tism, and part the dri­ve to trump all com­peti­tors and fakes. The self-taught Hou­di­ni nev­er had a mag­ic les­son. Loy­al­ty to fel­low magi­cians keeps author-magi­cian Fleis­chman from reveal­ing Houd

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From Booklist

Gr. 6-9. Could there be anyone more qualified than Newbery Medalist Fleischman to profile the "monarch of manacles" for young audiences? After all, as described in his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid (1998),^B Fleischman first earned his bread as a magician. This same background imposes an unexpected limitation: although the bibliography suggests publications to aid aspiring illusionists, Fleischman states upfront that an unspoken covenant among magicians prevents him from revealing Houdini's secrets. It's a tribute to Fleischman's zinging prose that, even without spoilers, his account remains terrifically engaging, delivered in a taut sideshow patter packed with delicious vocabulary (prestidigitator, bunkum) that may prompt even the most verbally indifferent to a new enthusiasm for their dictionaries. The showy language comes with real substance, too, as Fleischman explores his subject's tireless self-reinvention (born Ehrich Weiss in a Budapest ghetto, the ambitious lad's stage name was just one of many image-buffing ruses); his virulent egomania; and his foray

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Sid Fleischman Biographies

Near the end of his prolific career, Newbery medalist Sid Fleischman published remarkable biographies of three remarkable men.

Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain, 1835-1910), Ehrich Weiss (a.k.a. Harry Houdini, 1873-1926) and Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1978) shared little in common except an outsized persona, a talent for entertaining audiences, and lifespans that overlapped in interesting ways.  Houdini was born when Mark Twain was writing his first novel, about a boy named Tom Sawyer.  Chaplin was born just before Houdini began a stage career that would make his name a household word.  And Sid Fleischman was born the year Chaplin released his first film masterpiece.

A Fleischman fascination with all three men had personal roots.  He had grown up laughing at Chaplin’s comic quirks on film, had longed to be a magician in the Houdini mold, and admired Twain’s prose style so much he adopted it for some of his tall-telling children’s books like the McBroom series.  Still, as he writes in one of his prefaces, “Choosing a subject for a biograp

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