Park, Linda Sue (1960-…), is an Asian American children’s book author best known for historical novels inspired by her Korean heritage. Park won the 2002 Newbery Medal, awarded annually to the best children’s book by an American, for A Single Shard (2001). The story is set in Korea during the 1100’s. The hero is an orphan boy named Tree-ear who wants to learn the craft of pottery-making from the best potter in his village.
Park’s first children’s novel was Seesaw Girl (1999). It takes place in Korea in the 1600’s and tells about 12-year-old Jade Blossom, who is not allowed to leave her home but yearns to see the outside world. The Kite Fighters (2000) concerns two Korean brothers in the late 1400’s. One is skilled at making kites, and the other is good at flying them. When My Name Was Keoko (2002) takes place in Korea in 1940, when the country was ruled by Japan and Korean customs and traditions were outlawed. The Firekeeper’s Son (2004) is a picture book about a Korean boy in the early 1800’s who must tend a signal fire for the king. Project Mulberry (2005) is a novel about Julia Song, a modern Korean American seventh-grade girl.
Keeping Score (2008) is a historical novel set in 1951 about a 9-year-old baseball fan named Maggie. A Long Walk to Water (2010) describes how two children struggle to survive poverty and a civil war in Sudan. Park later wrote a picture book, Nya’s Long Walk (2019), about some of the same characters who appear in A Long Walk to Water. Prairie Lotus (2020) is the story of a young girl who moves with her father to the Dakota Territory in 1880, after the death of her Chinese mother.
Park wrote the fantasy adventure series “Wing & Claw,” which began in 2016 with Forest of Wonders. Her traditional Korean poems were published in Tap Dancing on the Roof: Sijo (2007).
Park has also written the picture books Mung-Mung: A Fold-Out Book of Animal Sounds (2004); What Does Bunny See?: A Book of Colors and Flowers, Yum! Yuck!: A Foldout Book of People Sounds, and Bee-bim Bop! (all 2005); The Third Gift (2011); Xander’s Panda Party (2013); Yaks Yak: Animal Word Pairs (2016), and Gurple and Preen: A Broken Crayon Cosmic Adventure (2020).
Park was born on March 25, 1960, in Urbana, Illinois, the daughter of Korean immigrants. She earned a B.A. degree in English from Stanford University in 1981 and went to study Anglo-Irish literature at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, in 1983. She moved to London in 1985 with her husband, where she taught English to foreign students and worked as a food journalist. Park received an M.A. degree in British literature from the University of London in 1988. She moved back to the United States with her husband and two children in 1990.
