About Kids Magician Chad Wonder – A Magical Biography

He’s “just a kids birthday magician.”

I’m what many in my craft refer to as a master magician, especially when it comes to kids birthday magic shows or kids magic shows in general. But I’m also just as entertaining just about any other group as well, from small family and friend gatherings, to schools and large corporate shows. But I do love performing for kids and frankly, when I won Nickelodeons Entertainer of the year, I knew I was pretty good at doing that.

It all began around the age of 8 or 9 when my best friend showed me a trick called the ball in vase while spending the night. When my dad picked me up the next day it was all I could talk about and if i recall, he suprised me by taking me to a magic shop in Boulder, Colorado. I only remember what seemed like a long counter and a lot of glass from visiting the shop but my friend showing me a small red ball disappear from his pocket and appear in a tiny vase sitting on a small boulder in the Colorado sun is burnt in my mind like the birth of my children. Almost 5-decades later I’m friends and compeers with magicians who worked in the store in the 1970’s and likely one of them met me and sold my dad magic that day that unbeknownst to us all would shart my path in magic. From that day forward I had a two word list for anyone interested in giving me a present… magic tricks. As a kid my music business dad and had a state of the art recording studio in an industrial building just off Santa Fe near the now demolished Cinderella City mall, home of Zeezo’s Magic Castle. On weekends when he had “custody” of my brother and I he would put a $20 bill in my 11-year old pocket and send me off to the mall with my 7-year old sibling in tow. I felt so lucky to have so much money, it was afterall, 1977. Looking back, I’m sure my brother only came once or twice but it was probably even luckier I didn’t lose him. Zeezo’s was amazing and  it immersed me in the craft, as with the shop in Boulder, many of the adults working behind the counter are now close friends and we reminice about those innocent days. It’s also where my family spent a lot of money buying magic, some that i still own today. In fact, there is a prop in my show that I have video of me performing when I was 12-years old in 1978. I’ve kept it in good working order although it has been refurbised a few times the last 30+ years. Right after graduating high school I went to work at Zeezo’s, but in another store in Aurora in yet anther demolised relic of the past, Buckingham Square… I can still smell the pizza from across the way. I loved working in a magic shop, so much so when I left the business side of the music business in 2004 I took every bit of money I had and opened my vision of a magic shop in Colorado Mills Mall. It was a dream come true and was almost profitable when the economy collapsed and it became a nightmare on too many levels to share here. My desire for magic wasn’t destroyed, It took time for me to turn myself around but ultimately I built a long running show at the Heritage Square Amusement park in Golden, Colorado where my weekend shows before it’s demise. Since that time I’ve been performing magic full time around the world after winning Nickelodeons Entertainer of the Year and being penned the Top Family Entertainer in Denver.

I am one of two members in 70 years elected by my peers to serve 3-times as the  local president of the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians (2004, 2012, 2013). I have served as the President (2006), Vice President (2005, 2011) and Secretary (2010).

I have been involved in children’s and kids entertainment since the age of ten when I was cast as a founding player in the Colorado Children’s Theater Ensemble. During high school I started a successful kids/children’s theater group performing over 250 day care center shows a year. My professional career started when I performed my first paying show at age sixteen.

I have two boys who are both in the thier 20’s. My oldest is a Type 1 diabetic and follows in the mother footsteps career wise and my youngest is in college earning a teaching degree.