Early on Sunday, when others still revel in their dreams, Shana and I are already in the car on the way to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. There we will do an interview with Jen Angeli about her new book „Kino and the King“. Jen is a young, sympathetic author who quickly became known with the adventure book in Hawai’i and America. This book also managed to be listed as the „Book of the Year“ in the 2018 American Book Fest competition. Jen Angeli did a thrilling, captivating youth adventure book telling a lot about Hawaiian culture and history. What was here in Europe the run on Harry Potter is in Hawai’i the run on the adventure book „Kino and the King“. Meanwhile, Harry Potter really got competition from the South Seas. A short description of the plot of this story:
Would you like to escape into an epic adventure back in time? Get a copy of KINO and the KING and follow Kino Kahele on their visit, when Hawai’i was still a young nation and the Kamehameha dynasty ruled the country. After Kino receives a pohaku (stone) from her grandmother to help Cinema find her fate, she is chased by mobbers to the Hawai’ian Hall at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. She ducks into the old grass hut exhibit in the museum and hides her stone in a seashell. With a flash of bright light, she is transported to 1825, where she meets eleven-year-old Kauikeaouli, just weeks before becoming Kamehameha III, Hawai’i’s longest reigning monarch.
Jen was fascinated as a little girl by the Bishop Museum and visited her often with her parents. Before and during the writing of the book, Jen was a visitor to this museum almost every day. Surprisingly, one could actually have counted Jen to the exhibition with a small sign: „The most frequent visitor of this museum“.
This Bishop Museum has also become one of my favorite museums. I am always happy and experience something new when we, Shana and I, visit it. Not only architecturally it is a masterpiece, also from the exhibition.
The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, located in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu, O’ahu, is referred to as the Hawai’i State Museum of Natural and Cultural History. It is a museum of history and science of the Hawaiian Islands and the South Seas. It was founded in 1889 and is the largest museum in Hawai’i. It has the world’s largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts and natural history exhibits. In addition to the extensive exhibits of Hawai’iana, the museum has a total of more than 24 million natural history exhibits, of which the entomological collection alone comprises more than 13.5 million copies. Thus, the Bishop Museum houses the third largest insect collection in the United States.
Charles Reed Bishop (1822-1915), was the husband of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop (1831-1884)
which was born into the royal family and was the last rightful heiress of the Kamehameha dynasty, who ruled between 1810 and 1872 the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Charles Reed Bishop was a businessman and co-founder of First Hawai’ian Bank and Kamehameha School, especially as he built the Memorial Museum for his deceased wife on the original boys‘ campus of the Kamehameha Schools. He intended that the museum should house family heirlooms, which were passed to him through the royal line of his wife.
In 1898 Bishop built on the campus, the Hawai’ian Hall and the Polynesian Hall in the popular Richardsonian Romanesque style.
To the Hawaiian literature
In the early history of Hawai’i, everything was obtained through oral transmission. The Hawaiians did not know the writing, nor did a writing system develop.
It was not until the nineteenth century, when American and European missionaries arrived, that the English language introduced western terms into the king’s house with the Latin alphabet. With the Kumuli Po and Polynesian mythology, the Hawaiian literature has begun and its origin. From John Papa, Samuel Kamakau, Kepelino Keauokalani und David Malo come the earliest compilations of traditional Hawaiian writings.
Later, King Kalākaua,Martha Beckwith, Abraham Fornander und William Drake Westervelt
producing fundamental, meaningful collections that retell or adapt oral Hawaiian history.
Other well-known authors who have lived in Hawai’i for a while and wrote famous works with Hawaiian themes and their settings include Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London. The detective novelist Earl Derr Biggers is best known for his books from Honolulu in the early 20th century, whose protagonist is the Chinese -Hawaiian detective Charlie Chan.
Hawaiian literature in the second half of the twentieth century was characterized by both rapid growth and an increasing emphasis on realism, sometimes influenced by the Second Hawaiian Renaissance and the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
King Kalakaua supported and encouraged writing and reading among his Hawaiians. As a result, in the time of King Kalakaua, it was able to read and write to about 80-90% of the population, which was not a fraction of that of the United States. The Hawaiian Kingdom was much more advanced in education and technological advancement than any other country.
Hawaii produced a colorful variety of magazines, newspapers and books, which is still going on today. Hawaii has great writers, authors who must satisfy the hunger of the large readership, so also comes a few years ago, a new movement in this sector: The comics.
Shana and I have now arrived at the cashier at the Bishop Museum and have received from the person in charge of the day the last specifications for our shooting on the site. So we could enter the museum, went straight to the park where we looked for a quiet place.
While I was studying the position of the sun and building up the camera accordingly, Shana was able to organize a chair for Jen at lightning speed. Shortly afterwards, Shana was on the way to pick Jen up there and escort her to the beautiful park where I was waiting.
When I saw my charming woman in normal shoes with her escort in high heels on the pending meadow, or whatever you want to describe the course, I was a little nervous slightly. – All good!!
We all had a short preliminary talk, Jen Angeli has laughingly sat down on the chair and the camera ran in record mode. Yes, the laughter of Jen and how figuratively she was infectious. It was a humorous, interesting time we spent in the shaded, directly exposed to the sun selected place in the park.
It was nice and restful, a sigh of relief, as Jen showed us her story in the cool museum inside.
Link:
- Jen Angeli
- Jen Angeli „Kino and the King“ New Book – Tiny TV
- Hawaii Book Lists (nicht vollständig)
- 50 Essential Hawai‘i Books You Should Read in Your Lifetime
- the Hawaiian Comic Book Alliance
- Martha Beckwith
- Abraham Fornander
- Kepelino Keauokalani
- John Papa-1 John Papa-2
- Samuel Kamakau -1 Samuel Kamakau-2
- David Malo-1 David Malo-2
- William Drake Westervelt -1 William Drake Westervelt-2
- Herman Melville-1 Herman Melville-2
- Mark Twain-1 Mark Twain-2
- Robert Louis Stevenson-1 Robert Louis Stevenson-2
- Jack London-1 Jack London-2
- Earl Derr Biggers
- Kriminalbeamte Charlie Chan -1 Kriminalbeamte Charlie Chan -2
Tales of Hawai'i 