Archive: Around Town

Where is the missing library card? Who took it, and why? These are the mysteries that magician David Moreland will try to unravel in his “Get A Clue @ Your Library” show coming to Lansing Community Library Center on Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 10 am. The Lansing Community Library Center is presenting the 45-minute show as part of their summer children’s reading program.

Moreland, a magician and actor who has appeared on Seinfeld, Friends, and Will & Grace, has combined magic, comedy, and puppetry into a show that encourages young people to get their own library card and fill their summer with reading. Each summer he creates a new character to tie in with the New York State library reading theme. Last year, he was a scrappy, bumbling pirate for the “Books: A Treasure” campaign; this summer, for “Get A Clue @ Your Library”, he is a silly British sleuth with a mischievous raccoon sidekick.

Moreland, a resident of Ithaca since 2002, makes his living these days by performing educational magic shows at schools and libraries, but for most of his twenty year professional career, he also worked as an actor. “In Los Angeles (where he lived for six years before moving to Ithaca) I worked as a children’s magician on the weekends and pursued film and television work during the week”, he says. In all, Moreland appeared in over 40 films and television series including Legally Blonde, The X Files, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Practice, and the cult hit Donnie Darko. For three seasons, he played Ted Danson’s obnoxious next-door neighbor Mr. Grenquist on Becker.

Despite his success in Hollywood, Moreland’s decision to leave for Ithaca was an easy one. “My wife and I have two young daughters and we wanted to raise them in more familiar territory.” Moreland himself was raised in Elma, New York, a small town outside of Buffalo, where most of his extended family still lives. “We like to be able to walk everywhere and to have an impact on our community. We’re just small-town people, I guess, so moving to Ithaca was like a homecoming for me.”

This summer Moreland will perform his “Get A Clue @ Your Library” show at over 50 libraries throughout Central New York and he says he finds special satisfaction in promoting summer reading. “I spent many summer days as a child at the Elma Public Library. I would walk a mile there from home and read about magic and theatre for hours at a time. It’s a great pleasure to share my love of reading with children.” New York State libraries make a special effort to promote reading in the summer and cite studies that show that children who fill their summers with reading do better at school than students who don’t.

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