Kjartan Poskitt - Harry Houdini (The First Names Series)

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 peoples memories and newspaper reports, and sometimes its 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

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July 7, 1912, New York, New York

Harry stood on a barge on New Yorks 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 theyve 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 wasnt going in? The weight of all that metal would drag him straight to the bottom! And just in case that wasnt 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 didnt the men working the ropes pull the box back up? In fact, they were just letting more and more rope out! Didnt 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! Hed escaped from the box!

Thank goodness he was safe, because there was no doubt about itHarry could easily have died!

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 wasnt 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 didnt speak in English; they always spoke to each other in German.)

Harrys dad was Mayer Samuel Weisz. He was an important Jewish scholar and lawyer, so he was known as Rabbi Weisz.

Harrys 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 dads 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 dideven as a grown-up!

Harrys 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.