At a magic lecture about kids' shows I heard that the best structure is to alternate between long and short tricks. I agree. Long tricks mean that you can have a higher joke to magic ratio and short tricks keep the kids awake.

I've already found a number of tricks which I would consider long, but need help finding some shorter tricks, like Milk to Silk. Have you guys out there got any good suggestions?

I guess the difficulty is there are a number of tricks which could either be long or short, depending on how much you pad them out. For example a simple professor's nightmare trick could be stretched into a full 10 minute rope routine.

I'm considering getting something(s) like Die Box, Hippity Hop Rabbits or Stratosphere. Do you think these would qualify as short tricks, or would they take up several minutes each due to the patter.

The problem with trying to follow that advice, of alternating long and short tricks, is the one you've just run into... what constitutes long, and what constitutes short. So while it sounds like good advice, don't use it to plan your entire show. Instead, liven up your long routines with short bits of magical excitement.

Do you recall the first Indiana Jones movie (Raiders of the Lost Ark)? It set a new precedent in movies in that something exciting happened at least once every minute. Today, most action flicks follow that rule. Excitement every minute.

So in your long routine, if you have little things appearing and disappearing, flashes of fire, quick bits of levitation, color changes, etc., you are following the same principle.

Consider the standard Kid's Show routine where you make a blank coloring book suddenly have black and white pictures and then the pictures become colored in. Add some elements, like the multiplying crayons, the vanishing crayons, the rainbow silk that loses its colors (as they transfer to the book) and you have now taken a long (and somewhat predictable) routine and filled it with short moments of exciting magic.