With a black Sharpie in her wrist guard-bound hand, Linda Sue Park is seated at a table in a West Los Angeles children’s bookstore, surrounded by kids who are clamoring over each other. The children are trying to get the Newbery Medal-winning author to autograph their copies of her latest work, Bee-bim Bop!, a picture book about the Korean dish.

“What’s your name?” Park asks a first-grader.

“Michelle,” the girl says, hopping up and down, watching as Park’s pen glides across the page, carefully forming characters under her English signature. “Oooh! Korean!”

“That’s my name in Korean,” Park says. “That’s all the Korean I know.”

“Do it for my sister in Korean, too,” Michelle Hong says, offering up her older sister’s copy of the book.

Fourth-grader Kristi and her sister, Michelle, both attend a predominantly white school. Seeing a book on the school’s required reading list that is written by a Korean writer, on the subject of something Korean, in this case, food, is a point of pride.

“She’s, like, awesome,” Kristi says of Park. “She’s a great writer. It feels great that she’s Korean.”

Linda Sue Park autographs copies of her latest book, Bee-bim Bop!, at a reading in Children’s Book World in Los Angeles.

“Really great,” Michelle chimes.

***

“One of America’s best loved children’s writers.” This is how Librarian of Congress James H. Billington introduced Park at the Oct. 8 ceremony for the Fifth National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., to an audience that included First Lady Laura Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

“I’m floating,” Park said as she took the stage in a floor-length navy blue skirt and a scalloped bejeweled top. “To be standing here in front of such a distinguished audience, I am really floating.”

Park was the first of four writers to address the room of political heavyweights. David McCullough, Sue Monk Kidd and Tom Wolfe followed.

“Books tell us the story of who we are as a nation,” the first lady said in her opening remarks. “Linda Sue Park tells the stories of young people who embark on physical or spiritual journeys of discovery. Her characters live on the cusp of two cultures, much as Linda did as the child of Korean immigrants.”

Billington described Park’s Newbery Medal-winning book, A Single Shard, as “an entrancing, poignant tale of a young orphan’s quest to become a potter in 12th century Korea.”

The John Newbery Medal is awarded annually to the writer of “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published in the United States,” Billington said. “Her latest book, Bee-bim Bop!, was inspired by the food and cooking of her Korean heritage, and like her other books, it speaks in a universal language to all ages.”

Park, who likes to preface her points with a joke, told the audience that when A Single Shard was awarded the Newbery, her son said, “Gosh, Mom, think of all those kids all over the country now who are going to be forced to read your book.”