Wandering the aisles of a Melbourne library, a young Paul Cosentino spied a book that would transform his life.
"I was a very reluctant reader and was struggling at school, so the library was the last place I wanted to be," he says.
Filled with vaudevillian posters and pictures of exotic magicians, the 12-year-old was transfixed by this encyclopaedia of magic.
The words on the pages were too hard to comprehend, so his mum explained the stories and magic tricks inside.
"My mother was a school principal and had been pulling her hair out trying to get me to read, but it was actually this book that taught me to read and inspired my love of magic," he says.
Today, illusionist and escapologist Cosentino mesmerises audiences around the world in his trademark fedora hat and facial piercings.
He has won multiple Merlin Awards, considered the highest accolade in the magic industry, joining the likes of his hero David Copperfield.
But it was Cosentino's very first magic trick for his father that set the wheels in motion.
"I made the coin vanish with some sleight of hand magic," Cosentino says.
"My father, the civil and structural engineer, the genius, didn't know how I did it.
"That ignited something in me and I became obsessed with learning the craft of magic."
Cosentino remembers when, still a teenager, he showed off his talent on the must-see television show at the time, Hey Hey It's Saturday, winning the prize money and a legion of fans at his school.
"I never told anyone at school I did magic, so when I went back to school on the Monday after the show, all the kids recognised me and were congratulating me," he says.
By the age of 17, he had registered his company and was starting to perform to crowds in schools, cruise ships, theatres and pubs, before eventually landing his own prime-time television show and even starring in a Jackie Chan Hollywood movie.
Learning individualism from books
Cosentino is proud he learned magic the hard way, through books and trial and error.
"It's much easier now, but the problem with learning from somewhere like YouTube is you learn to mimic someone else," he says.
"When you learn from a book you have to inject your own personality into your performance and that's what makes a good showman."
Being a showman comes easily to Cosentino.
"I was inspired by people like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and then later in the 80s, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince and Bruce Lee," he says.
"All the energy I bottled up as a kid with crippling shyness, it just explodes when I'm on stage and I come alive."
To maintain his high energy, dancing and physical fitness central to his shows, Cosentino says he is disciplined with gym workouts and rehearsals and abstains from temptations like alcohol or coffee.
But even with such a strict regime, things occasionally go wrong.
"Over the last 15 years I've been slashed by knives, had ruptured eardrums under water and cracked ribs and broken ankles, but luckily that's not too often," Cosentino says.
Cosentino never tires of the most common question from his baffled fans, "How do you do it?", when he saws someone in half or holds his breath for up to seven minutes.
It is this fascination and awe of Cosentino's illusions that attract people to his shows.
"It's not a job for me, it's not a career, it's an obsession," he says.
"You have to be devoted to the art form and give it your whole soul, that's why there's not that many magicians around because it's a tough art form."
The power of a book was never lost on Cosentino and through his own children's series he wants to light that magic in other kids who struggle, like he did many years ago.
"I designed the books for reluctant readers, so I'm hoping to inspire more children and adults that are young at heart to fall in love with magic."
