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| Photo: Klaus Pollmeir |
This month The Edge of the Forest sat down for a cyber visit with
Linda Sue Park.
Linda Sue Park is the author of critically aclaimed picture books, Middle Grade
and Young Adult fiction, and will soon release a new volume of poetry for children. She was awarded the Newbery Medal for A Single
Shard and has written one of my favorite Middle Grade titles of the past few years, Project Mulberry.
Thank you very much, Linda Sue, for talking to The Edge of the Forest.
It’s a great honor to speak with you.
The Edge of the Forest: You write in a variety of genres. You have written historical fiction, contemporary fiction,
and picture books. How do you decide what to write when and why?
Linda Sue Park: My writing is influenced first and foremost by what I read. I read all over the map: fiction,
nonfiction, poetry, essays, for adults and young people. Whenever I read a wonderful piece of writing, I get awestruck and
excited and inspired, and I want to try writing something like it. I still have a lot of genres and kinds of writing left
to learn about and explore—enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life, and then some!
In general, when it comes to the choice of the genre, I would say that for me, the story comes first, and the story decides
for me.
The Edge of the Forest: We are huge fans of Project Mulberry in our household. My ten-year-old daughter
read it three times in a row. Does Julia have a real-life model? Will there be a sequel to Project Mulberry?
Linda Sue Park: Wow—tell your daughter hello and thanks! Although all my characters have at least a little bit
of me in them, Julia is probably the closest I have come to writing an autobiographical character. Certain details—
growing up in a town with no other Korean families, not liking kimchee (I like it now, but I didn't when I was young),
having a friend who loved doing projects—these come from my own life. But Julia is different from me in other ways; for
example, she doesn't like to read very much. She's her own person, not a copy of me.
I'm always flattered when readers say they would like me to write a sequel to any of my books. One reader wrote to me and
asked for a book about Patrick. I'd never say 'never,' but as of now I don't have plans to write sequels to any of my
books.
The Edge of the Forest: What were your favorite books as a child? Did any particular books or writers inspire your
work today?
Linda Sue Park: I had hundreds of favorite books as a child. Some of them are listed in the
Reading section of my
website. I'm sure that every one of them has had an influence on my work, consciously or not.
There are specific titles that I refer to when I'm talking to writers about craft. When I read these books as a child, I
was of course not aware of the techniques their authors used to such great effect, but I have since come to admire their
skill, and I try to emulate it in my own work. A few examples:
Point of view: Roosevelt Grady, by Louisa Shotwell.
Detail and imagery: The Melendy family books by Elizabeth Enright: The Saturdays;
The Four-Story Mistake; Then There Were Five; Spiderweb for Two.
First-person voice: I, Juan de Pareja, by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino.
Character development: Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell Hoban; What Then, Raman?, by Shirley Arora.
There is also a series of books that I read to my little sister when I was about ten or so, and later to my own children.
They are the only books I have ever read that I would call 'perfect.' Character development, humor, story arc... As a
reader, I enjoy and admire them more every time I read them. As a writer, I find them so brilliant that they actually
intimidate me; because of them, I've never had any desire to write an easy reader. They're the Frog and Toad
books by Arnold Lobel.
The Edge of the Forest: Which do you find more difficult—writing for younger children or writing novels for
the Middle Grade crowd?
Linda Sue Park: Middle-grade. No, younger children. No, wait—YA (When My Name Was Keoko is often
shelved as YA, and I've written YA short stories.) Honestly, every story has its own challenges. That's another reason I
enjoy working in various genres; I love that each time I write something, it feels different from the time before.
The Edge of the Forest: You have recently begun writing a blog (at What
I'm Reading: the reading (mostly) journal of Linda Sue Park). What inspired you to begin your blog?
How does blogging fit with your writing? Do you find it adds to or detracts from your creative life and writing?
Linda Sue Park: The blog grew out of the Reading section
of my website. A few years ago, I began keeping a list of what I read,
mostly because my memory isn't as good as it used to be, and I'd sometimes forget titles, authors, etc. I threw the list up
on my website under the heading 'Recent Reading,' because when I first started the site, I had hardly anything to put on it.
I updated the list monthly. Time when by, stuff happened, and I got a lot busier; I couldn't update the 'recent reading'
page as often as I used to. And I started to get mail about it—people writing me to ask why the page was so out of
date. I needed an easier way to update rather than doing it via my webmaster, so that's why I started the blog.
It's a plus as far as my work is concerned. I limit it to posts about what I'm reading and occasionally my own work, and I
am not compulsive about it in the least. I post when I feel like it, and it never feels like a burden. I don't think my
blog has a very wide readership, not like some other much more conscientious author-bloggers I know, but with the way
blogging has taken hold in the zeitgeist, I feel like it's definitely another way to get in touch with readers. (Check out Linda
Sue's reading blog at lsparkreader.livejournal.com)
The Edge of the Forest: The Korean and Korean-American experience is obviously very important to your writing. How
have children responded to learning more about Korea (and the Korean-American experience) from your fiction?
Linda Sue Park: The response has been overwhelmingly, gratifyingly positive. My favorite kind of response is when a
reader tells me that my books make them want to learn more about ________ ; that blank could be anything from Korea itself
to kite-fighting, pottery, World War II. That's my hope: for my books to be not an end-point, but an arrow leading to
further discovery.
I worry a lot about the responsibility that comes with depicting a little-known culture when so few other authors are
writing about it. I do not intend or want my books to be any kind of definitive word on Korean culture, heaven forbid, and
the only solution to that problem is for there to be lots more stories set in Korea by lots more authors. Hurry up, you
other Korean-American writers out there!
The Edge of the Forest: What is the most difficult and/or most fun thing about being a writer?
Linda Sue Park: In my work, I do basically two things: Sit at home and make up stories, or go out on the road to
give presentations and meet thousands of readers and lots of other writers. When you consider all the possible ways to make
a living, my job is way up there—in the top ten, for sure, maybe even top five. I've been so fortunate—what's to
complain? About the vagaries of the publishing industry? Most of that stuff isn't something I can control, so I do my best
not to sweat it. Bad reviews? Ditto. The mental or emotional or spiritual difficulty of getting a story right? OK, that
always exists, but it's also the fun part. The challenge and the fun—they're the same thing for me.
The Edge of the Forest: What are you reading now?
Linda Sue Park: I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Just kidding. Right now, I'm reading dozens and dozens
of books because I'm on the panel for this year's National Book
Award for Young People's Literature. A fascinating
experience. But I can't talk about what I'm reading because our deliberations are confidential.
One title I *can* talk about because it's a book for adults: Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. Nonfiction, a baseball
book. If you like baseball (I grew up a Cubs fan and am now a Mets fan), this is a must-read.
The Edge of the Forest: What are you currently working on and what do we have to look forward to in the near future
from Linda Sue Park?
Linda Sue Park: Spring 2007: the paperback of Project Mulberry (Random House/Yearling). Also the audio
version of Archer's Quest (Random House/Listening Library).
Fall 2007: a poetry collection! I'm really excited about it. The title is Tap Dancing on the Roof: a collection of
Sijo (Clarion Books). Sijo is a traditional Korean form of poetry. They're sort of the 'national' verse form, akin to
haiku for the Japanese. The book is being illustrated by the remarkable Istvan Banyai (Zoom; Re-Zoom;
The Other Side), and I can't wait for it to come out!
Books by Linda Sue Park
Archer's Quest. Clarion Books, 2006. IBSN: 0-6185-9631-3.
Project Mulberry. Clarion Books, 2005. ISBN: 0-6184-7786-1.
Bee-Bim Bop!, illustrated by Ho Baek Lee. Clarion Books, 2005. ISBN 0-6182-6511-2.
Yum Yuck!, with Julia Durango,illustrated by Sue Rama. Charlesbridge Books, 2005.
ISBN 1-57091-659-4.
What Does Bunny See?, illustrated by Maggie Smith. Clarion Books, 2005. ISBN: 0-6182-3485-3.
The Firekeeper's Son, illustrated by Julie Downing. Clarion Books, 2004. ISBN 0-6181-3337-2.
Mung-Mung, illustrated by Diane Bigda. Charlesbridge Books, 2004. ISBN 1-5709-1486-9.
A Single Shard. Clarion Books, 2002. ISBN: 0-3959-7827-0. (Winner of the 2002 Newbery Medal)
Paperback edition: Random House/Yearling, 2002. ISBN: 0-4404-1851-8.
When My Name Was Keoko. Clarion Books, 2002. ISBN: 0-6181-3335-6. Paperback edition:
Random House/Yearling, 2004. ISBN: 0-4404-1944-1.
The Kite Fighters. Clarion Books, 2001. ISBN: 0-3959-4041-9. Paperback edition:
Random House/Yearling, 2001. ISBN: 0-4404-1813-5.
Seesaw Girl. Clarion Books, 2000. ISBN: 0-3959-1514-7. Paperback edition: Random
House/
Yearling, 2000. ISBN: 0-4404-1672-8.
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