This article profiles Newbery Award-winning author Linda Sue Park, a special breed of author who writes so convincingly about the past it is as if she herself has actually lived these stories from a time long gone. She has provided such spectacular glimpses into Korea's storied past with books such as "A Single Shard" (Clarion, 2001), "The Kite Fighters" (Dell Yearling, 2000) and "Seesaw Girl" (Dell Yearling, 1999), that it was surprising to learn that she can only speak and read a small amount of Korean. As a child growing up in Chicago, even though there were definitely Asian influences in her life, Park considered her family to be very Americanized. Both of her parents hail from South Korea, yet met as college students in the United States. She related that she did not know much about her parents' lives in Korea until she began writing for children. It was when she was researching her novel, "When My Name was Keoko" (Dell Yearling, 2002) that so many stories from her parents' lives in Korea came bubbling to the surface.