Episode 789 - Who is Master Hopkick?
In this episode, Andrew along with Jenni Siu, Jenni Nather, and Chris Rickard talk about who is Master Hopkick
Who is Master Hopkick? - Episode 789
Have you encountered Master Hopkick? If you have been following whistlekick, chances are you might know him. In this very rare episode where Jeremy isn’t present, Andrew along with Jenni Siu, Jenni Nather, and Chris Rickard talk about who is Master Hopkick
After listening to the episode it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Andrew Adams:
Welcome. You're listening to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, and today's episode is gonna be a slightly different one, a little historic because one of the few episodes that Jeremy is not here. That's right. If you are only listening and not watching, you can't see that Jeremy's here, but you have to take my word for it. He's not here. But who am I? I'm Andrew Adams. I'm the producer and co-host for the show. And you know, everything we do here at whistlekick is in support of traditional martial arts. You can visit us at whistlekick.com, check out our online home to make a purchase. If you wish to make a purchase, you can do so using the code podcast15 and get 15% off almost anything from there. Everything from the fun to the practical. Martial Arts Radio, this podcast itself gets its own website. You can find that at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Our goal here at whistlekick is to connect, educate, entertain traditional martial artists. And if you wanna help this show and the work that we do, there's a lot of ways you can do that. You can follow us on social media. We're @whistlekick pretty much everywhere you can find. You can join our Patreon. That's right. We have Patreon. You can help support this show for as little as only $2 a month, we're gonna tell you who's coming on the show. We're gonna give you some behind-the-scenes stuff of all and all kinds of stuff about whistlekick in general. If you are willing to contribute a little bit more, we're going to give you a little, you know, not a little bit more, let's be honest. We're gonna give you a ton more. We give you way more value than you ever give us. Our biggest fans know that checking whistlekick.com/family every week gives 'em the most authentic behind-the-scenes experience with whistlekick and it's free. That's right. It's free. So today, as I mentioned, Jeremy's not here, but we are joined by three other whistlekick staff members. We're first joined by, we've got two Jenni’s. So I'm gonna go, I'm just gonna go with Jenni Nather and Jenni Siu. That's just the easiest way. So we're joined by Jenni Siu, it's great to see you today, Jenni.
Jenni Siu:
Good to see you too. Thank you. And I'm sorry that we're both Jenni. We didn't do it on purpose.
Andrew Adams:
That's fine. We'll live. We'll bookend these with the two Jenni’s, so we'll go. We're also joined by Chris Rickard today. Chris, great to see you.
Chris Rickard:
Good to be back, Andrew. Nice to see you guys as well.
Andrew Adams:
And then rounding out our other Jenni. We've got Jenni Nather.
Jenni Nather:
Hi guys, and please take note that not only are we both Jenni, we both spell it the exact same weird way so even that doesn't help.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. They're both Jenni. That's right.
Jenni Siu:
We were meant to work on this together.
Andrew Adams:
That's right. It was just meant to be.
Jenni Siu:
Yep.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. It was meant to be. So we are here today to chat about a book that whistlekick has published. But this is a book that came out like a long time ago. So, let's chat about that. Like, why are we now a year later, Jenni Siu you're the author of the Origins of Master Hopkick. Can you chat a little bit about, for those that may not know what the book is, where it came from, where the idea of it came from and give the audience a backstory as to what it is.
Jenni Siu:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the Origin of Master Hopkick was a document that was pretty much given to me by Jeremy. It was kind of thrown in my lap and he said this needs some work, can you fix it? And I was thinking from an editing point of view, sure I can reword some things and, you know, move some things around and make it more readable. And then I read it and I went, the spine of this, the core of this is amazing, but this is rough. The timeline didn't really line up, things like that. And so I wrote back to him and I said, hey, how much freedom do I have to change this? And you guys know Jeremy, he just came back and said, it's yours. You take it, run with it. I trust you. Just make it great. And so I can't say I made it great, but I had a lot of fun. And so it is, I think our first if I'm not mistaken, it's whistlekick's first book for kids. And I say for kids, when I was writing it, I was writing it to a middle grade. I was trying to stick to a middle-grade level reading level. Somewhere between like fifth and eighth grade. Our protagonist, our character who becomes Master Hopkick starts out as a 10-year-old. And so we started, I started it kind of with those bones and then just built it and I was really conscious of wanting, I wanted everyone to enjoy it. I wanted it to be something that people could read aloud to little kids and they wouldn't feel lost. I also wanted it to be something that an adult could pick up and not feel bored by. And so as I started to build the Origin of Master Hopkick, Master Hopkick has been, as I understand it, and I know Jeremy's not here, but as I understand it, he's been a character that's been a part of whistlekick for a lot longer than I have. And so what we wanted to do is give him a backstory. We wanted to tell people who he is, why you should care, why he is something of a mascot for whistlekick. And so, I started writing that backstory for a kid who grows up in a very poor situation, finds himself training with a not well-known, but ultimately very famous martial artist and we build his story from there. So, the fun part about it is with people who have read it, they identify with it and that was what we tried really, really hard to do. And just like everything that whistlekick does, we try and make it, how does Jeremy put it? Style agnostic in that sense. I didn't wanna go, hey, this kid does karate, and so if you do kung fu or jiujitsu, you're gonna be bored or not gonna be able to relate. So worked really hard at it being, he's learning a martial arts. He learns from several different teachers over the years. He learns that we all do the same things a little bit different ways. We, at them, explained to us in different contexts. And it was really, really fun to dive into the history of martial arts coming to the west from the east, and the history of finding out what it actually would look like for a kid 80 years ago to start learning martial arts. And that's, that story just started to build and develop and kind of took on a life of its own so.
Andrew Adams:
Excellent. That's pretty cool. For those that are watching and not just listening, you can see, I've actually have a postcard here so you can see what Master Hopkick looks like. Kind of cool. Chris is grabbing his master ventures of Origins of Master Hopkick book right there. And now Jenni Nather, you are holding up a special edition book, so I'd love to throw it over to you. Talk a little bit about your role in this project and maybe a little bit about what this special edition book is.
Jenni Nather:
Absolutely! So we did start with the basic novel that is the red cover book behind Chris. The story is amazing and it's beautiful, and I can tell you from experience as the book director, I had the opportunity to edit and format, and the first time I read this story, I was at work on my lunch break, bawling my eyes out and just totally relating to these characters and loving every second of it. So I knew it was amazing. From the feedback we've been getting from those who have read it, it's not just the kids who are enjoying it, the adults are finding it wonderful read as well. So we knew there was more here. There had to be something more. So we took that story and start to create additional content. Jenni was gracious enough to add a bonus chapter for the special edition, plus there's a lesson from one of John Ramos’ instructors in here. There's other additional bonus features including color photos that helped inspire some of the locations and the people that you'll read about in the story. It absolutely is such a wonderful universe that has been created. Can I say that we are working on more books Jenni? Am I putting you on the spot?
Jenni Siu:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm writing books. There's two and three right now, so yes.
Jenni Nather:
And there's so much more to come from this universe. And we wanted to make sure that since it was so special, it had a special addition to highlight some of those things for us so all in one little spot for you there.
Andrew Adams:
That's amazing. That's really cool. So, I had seen the cover and I knew that there was a special addition, but I didn't realize that there were color. Are they color photographs or they illustrations?
Jenni Nather:
There are colored photographs included in there. Yes. And since you did bring up the cover, I would like to give a special shout-out to Nathan Wright, who was the illustrator who developed the Master Hopkick that you see and love.
Andrew Adams:
Awesome. So this here as well?
Jenni Nather:
That guy. Absolutely.
Andrew Adams:
Nice. Now, Chris, I understand that there's another aspect that is also included in this book that you have had something to do with. Can you chat a little bit about that?
Chris Rickard:
So yeah, the new sort of addition that's coming really, really soon, hopefully around the time that you're listening to this episode is what we're introducing as a mat chat teacher assistants guide sort of thing. It has a much better title than that, but it escapes me at the moment because it's been a day. When you listen to Jenni and Jenni talk, you know how much effort has already gone in on this, how much research that Jenni was doing while she was writing it, looking to make things time appropriate. And one of the nice parts about the book is that it can be a really fast read. The chapters are short. They're not multiple thousands of words. They're generally five, six pages, give or take on that one. So it's something that you can read with a younger child in a smaller digestible chunk. Now, talking with Jenni when we had a whistlekick event back free training day in 2021. Yeah, 2021. Me being a classroom teacher, I teach high school kids, but I look at stuff and then I start asking questions. That's why whistlekick keeps me around, I think. But it was the, okay, so what about this and what about this? And did you realize this? Like talking to her, I was like, so Jenni, did you realize that you basically have a theme for every single chapter? And we can say, okay, so the one on this one is responsibility, or on this one is loyalty or preparation, things like that. And so now it was that, okay, well what questions could we really be asking our martial arts kids in our classes if say we read a section of the book at the beginning of class or at the end of class and then start talking about it, what would you ask? And then, again, because of the work that Jenni put into it, it's, well, why does this just need to be for martial arts schools? Why couldn't we expand this to other kids? Other situations? Would it be completely appropriate for something to bring into a traditional classroom? Absolutely. Doesn't have to be martial arts. Would it be an excellent opportunity as a cultural [11:35.4]? Yeah. If you look at so many of the things that are written on in that middle-grade level, at least here in the United States, so many of them are focused on United States areas or maybe Western Europe. This is taking us to the whole other side of the globe which is not an area that our education system really spends a lot of time on for better or for worse. And so now, it's like we're bringing in those maps. It was like, okay, so yes, we're saying the Solomon Islands. Can you tell me where that is? Like look at where that is related to where you live, whether you live in the United States or not. Like looking and bringing in those multidisciplinary things and looking at some of those ideas and just asking questions. Lots and lots and lots of questions. I think last time we counted it unofficially, it was somewhere between five and 600 questions, maybe?
Jenni Nather:
Give or take.
Andrew Adams:
Wow.
Chris Rickard:
Give or take, so.
Jenni Siu:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Wow. And so is it a separate book or is it included in this new special edition?
Chris Rickard:
Jenni, I'll kick that one to you as the book guru on this one.
Jenni Nather:
Sure. We actually will have two versions available. One is just the mat check guide by itself. So for anybody who already has copies of the original version of the Origin of Master Hopkick, you can grab a hold of that Mat Chat Guide. Boom. There you go, everything ready. If you don't already have a copy of the novel, I am very excited to announce there is going to be a combo version, which will include the special edition version of the novel with the bonus chapter, and incorporate that Mat Chat Guide right in there so that as you're reading each chapter, the questions will be available right immediately after that chapter.
Andrew Adams:
That's cool. And do we have a date as to when it will be available?
Jenni Nather:
I am hoping that it'll be finalized by the time this episode is released. It is in the final stages of editing and proving now.
Andrew Adams:
Okay, so this episode will come out on February 16th. If you're listening to this on the day it came out, check out whistlekick.com. You could search for it there. Where else were we gonna be able to find it as well?
Jenni Nather:
You can go to Amazon.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jenni Nather:
And you can search Jeremy Lesniak, which will pop up not only this book but our entire whistlekick library books. You could also search Special Master Hopkick and that should pull that up as the top search.
Andrew Adams:
Special Master Hopkick. Okay, cool. Now, one of the things that I found interesting, so I have a copy of the book and I let my daughter's best friend who is 11 let him read it because his training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Jenni Siu:
Nice.
Andrew Adams:
And I wanted to get some, you know, kids' feedback.
Jenni Siu:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
I mean, I read it and it was like, oh, this is great. But I was like, oh, I wanna see how what he thinks of it. And he read it and one of the first questions he asked me was when's number two coming out?
Jenni Siu:
Yes. That's awesome. That's awesome.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, which is pretty cool.
Jenni Siu: Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
What I really like about this is there are not a lot of books for martial artists of this age.
Jenni Siu:
Right.
Andrew Adams:
There are lots of books geared towards really young kids. My daughter, when she was maybe seven or eight, had some like Moby Shinobi books, for example, right? But they're really, really, really geared towards young, young, young kids and there's not a lot that I know of and I could be wrong, but for that middle age, do you, what did that play into your reason, rationale for doing it for that middle age, Jenni Siu?
Jenni Siu:
Yes, absolutely. So I did a lot of research to try and find out what's out there and being a martial artist and also being a teacher, we, my husband and I have run a school together for about 10 years now. So I got a lot of students and I started asking them like, have you read martial arts related stuff that's not like a manual for adults? Or a little kid's book that, you know, there's several out there that talk a lot about one specific art, like Taekwondo is a big one, or karate. There's a couple of series, but it's just kids going through classes and that sort of thing. And so, yes, absolutely as I looked into what was out there, I thought to myself, this is a niche, I guess you could say that we wanna find. Because again, with that middle-grade level, like I can read a middle-grade novel and enjoy it as light reading, right? But I could also read it out loud to my kids. And if I have one word that I have to define or explain per chapter to them, that's fine. I'll take that on, you know? And so yeah, I really, you know, I wanted to stay as close to the manuscript that I was originally given, the rough draft. And that was one element of why we chose to target you know, 10 to 15-year-olds ish. But as it developed I was like, oh man, now this is a sweet spot that is meeting a need that I think a lot of people don't know is there. And another element as I was writing is I like, you know, has sort of been hinted at, like, Chris, you took this and you're thinking, how do I get this out to teachers and students in traditional school settings? My goal was twofold and I really wanted a martial artist to read it and get excited. I wanted, you know, a 12-year-old martial artist to identify and say, yeah, oh, we don't do that, but we do it this way and that's super cool. I also wanted a kid who picks it up and has never done martial arts to enjoy the story. And then of course, hopefully, you know, as a martial arts instructor, I would love for them to look into it more and say this looks really cool and he did multiple different things. And so wherever they go and, you know, look into training, it's not like, oh, it has to be just like John's school, you know? And that was one of my goals as well. And so my hope is, you know, that the feedback we get from our readers is that I wanna get into martial arts, you know. Someday to hear, hey, I started karate or whatever it was because I read this and you know, I wanted to do it. So, yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Cool. Now, Jenni Nather, I'm curious what feedback you've gotten from people in regards to the book.
Jenni Nather:
Some of the feedback that we have gotten is exactly as Jenni is describing. Kids are picking this up and saying, this is cool, whether they have done martial arts or not. The other major piece that we're getting is folks who are reading it with their kids, and kids are starting to enjoy reading. Kids who would normally struggle through a chapter book because it's assigned at school are sitting down and enjoying reading this book. Whether it's with their parent or by themselves at this point. And that's a beautiful thing as a book nerd and a martial artist, that makes me so happy.
Andrew Adams:
That's awesome.
Jenni Siu:
That's amazing.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely.
Jenni Siu:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Now, Chris I would, like, I had a question about the Mat Chat aspect that you had talked about. So, I really like the idea of having this book which you wouldn't read the book cover to cover in the middle of a class because it'll be a little too long for that but the fact that you know, 3, 4, 5 pages could certainly start or finish the end of a class and lead to a chat that you can have with your students. A chat on the mat, ie. a mat chat, right? I'm wondering if you could give an example of like, not, obviously, let's not sit here and read five pages to the audience, but an example of like one of what one of these chapters would be about and what the discussion might unfold with you and your students.
Chris Rickard:
Okay. So, trying not to spoil anything too much here. There is early on in the book a chapter where John is approaching who he hopes is going to be his first instructor, and like in a number of stories that we see in mainstream media, the original answer is no. And so now, John's pushing. And he's pushing in the ways that he thinks are available to him based on his age and situation and everything like that. And eventually part of the discussion becomes, okay, well, we're gonna have to go talk to your mom about this. I might be willing to teach you. I'm not saying yes or no, but we have to find out what your mom says first. And so now discussion that opens up because the chapter doesn't end with the discussion, it's that ends with the thread of the discussion was, okay, so if mom or if John's mom says no, what's John gonna do? And so now, you could start discussing like, legitimately, what do you think he's going to do? What's option one? What's option two? What's good about option one? What's bad about option two? Like, is one of these choices better than another? And things like that. Like how do you handle adversity? You're not getting what you want right away. Are you understanding why you're not getting what you want?
Andrew Adams:
I love it. I love it. So it really can be a book that you can just read and enjoy and have fun, but it really can be a teaching tool that you can use in your school to teach these lessons, which is pretty cool. What am I missing? What questions have I not asked that you think our readers should hear about?
Chris Rickard:
I think one of the interesting things that you could use the Mat Chat book itself if you are a parent that has a child that is reading the book. But either you don't have the time to read the book yourself or you're not sure about how to talk about it with your child, figure out what chapter they're on, flip in and start off with one of those questions. Because so many times when you ask a child a leading question, they're gonna tell you way more than you would've expected. If you give them that yes or a no, that's all you're gonna get.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Chris Rickard:
But when you dig in, now you get to start a conversation. And the style of questions that are in the Mat Chat book that are things that you could apply to other things that your kids are reading as well. Maybe you've looked up a quick synopsis on whatever your favorite book site is, and you use that thinking in mind with what you saw here was like, okay, well if I know this, I could ask that kind of a question and then see where they go with it. Helping the kids try to dig deeper or get more out of it so that when they get to those challenging questions, they're used to responding and it's not going to seem so challenging for them. Just like martial arts, get out there and do it. Practice.
Jenni Siu:
Yeah, if I may jump in, one of the things that I so appreciate about all the questions Chris asked, cause I loved his enthusiasm when we first met and got talk and had that conversation is one of the elements that I wanted keeping in mind, of course, we've got layers as we're writing, right? But keeping in mind that we may not have martial, we may have non-martial artists reading this and there needs to be a lot of application, there needs to be a lot of discussion material, just by nature, even just a kid who picks it up and reads it. So, you know, I dug in like Chris said, I dug in hard to make sure it was historically correct. And when I did that, one of the elements that like kind of the backdrop was to find out that there's a lot of different elements of culture that I had to address somehow, you know. We had racism, we had all sorts of things that we don't necessarily discuss in a children's book or even a martial arts context. But it all kept coming up and I went, well, do I skirt around it and change the story or do I address it? I tried to do it, you know, an age-appropriate way. We went head-on with some of those things like you mentioned, with asking permission, right? You can't just do what you want because you're in a book. Like it has to be something that at the end of the day, the reader sets the book down and says, I'm better because I read it, right? And they go through each of those processes in each of those chapters and are able to go, ah, in this situation, this is the right thing to do. And of course, that's open to interpretation and context, but that was kind of the goal and it was really exciting to find that Chris found it that way as well. And I love, love, love that he just came back with hundreds of questions and we were able to do something with that. That's super exciting because not everyone knows how to ask those questions, and so to have a guide is gonna be super, super awesome so.
Jenni Nather:
And Jenni stole my response. The subject matter that is in her story, even though this takes place in a different time period, it's still very relevant. These are still definitely issues that come up, and this is a great way to introduce topics that might be a little bit more difficult to discuss with your kids in a comfortable way that lead into some deep discussions and understanding. And Chris's questions did such a beautiful job of making me love the story so much more. Just for that reason, it was like, oh wow, I did just read that, didn't I? It was beautiful.
Andrew Adams:
Excellent. Well, Jenni Nather, Jenni Siu, Chris Rickard, thank you so much for coming on the show today and talking about this. I'm excited for it to be available to the public. Again, as was mentioned, you can check out whistlekick.com to purchase your copy. You can also visit Amazon and go there as well. Don't forget, if you do go to whistlekick.com though, if you use the code podcast 15, you can save yourself 15%. So maybe go there instead of Amazon just saying, hmm. Check out whistlekickmartialartsradio.com for the show notes for this episode. There you can find videos, links, social media, picture, more, not just for this episode, but everyone that we've ever done. Do you own a martial arts school? If you do, did you know that whistlekick has a zero-obligation consulting service? The average school sees positive return just a couple months just saying. And I guess that's pretty much it. And until next time, I don't know, man. I don't know. Do you think we can do all four of us do this at once?
Jenni Nather:
Give us a countdown.
Jenni Siu:
We can do it.
Andrew Adams:
All right. Ready? Until next time, train hard, smile, have a great day.