BooksmART: Linda Sue Park

The daughter of Korean immigrants, Linda Sue Park has been writing poems and stories since she was four years old. Her favorite thing to do as a child was read. After working as a public relations writer for a major oil company, moving to Ireland, getting married, starting a family, and teaching English as a second language to college students, Park returned to the United States and realized that what she really wanted to do was write books for children. She published her first novel, Seesaw Girl, in 1999. Her 2001 novel, A Single Shard, a poignant story about a Korean orphan and his fascination with the craft of making delicate celadon ware, won her the prestigious Newbery Medal in 2002 and firmly established her as a formidable force in children’s literature. She has since written five more novels and six picture books for younger readers. In her most recent picture book, Tap Dancing on the Roof: A Collection of Sijo (2007), Park has returned to her roots as a poet to explore this ancient Korean three-line verse form and adapt it for modern readers. Her latest novel, Keeping Score, has been named to Oprah’s new Kids Reading List. It is set in Brooklyn before the outbreak of the Korean War and follows the life of a young Italian-Irish girl and avid baseball fan, Maggie. Maggie learns to keep score from a childhood friend who is subsequently drafted into the army and sent overseas to fight in Korea, leaving Maggie behind, closely following events as they unfold in a country far away. Park graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English and now lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children and their Border Terrier, Fergus.

“Park is a masterful prose stylist, and her characters are developed beautifully. She excels at making traditional Korean culture accessible to Western readers.”—Michael Levy, VOYA

Selected Works by the Author

Novels: Keeping Score (2008), Click (2007) (with Eoin Colfer, Gregory Maguire, Roddy Doyle, Margo Lanagan, Nick Hornby, et al), Archer’s Quest (2006), Project Mulberry (2005), When My Name Was Keoko (2002), A Single Shard (2001), The Kite Fighters (2000), Seesaw Girl (1999) Picture Books: Tap Dancing on the Roof: A Collection of Sijo (2007), The Fire Keeper’s Son (2004)