Ever since her boy hero's apprenticeship to a master potter in her Newbery Medal–winning A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park has found her way into historical and modern predicaments through a child's perspective. Her picture book this holiday season, The Third Gift, illustrated by Bagram Ibatouilline, retells the story of the magi from the viewpoint of a child whose father harvests the myrrh that will serve as one of their three gifts. She also contributed a story, "The Harp," inspired by one of Chris Van Allsburg's enigmatic drawings, to this fall's The Chronicles of Harris Burdick.
On your nightstand now:
Nightstand: The Flint Heart by John and Katherine Paterson; The Curious Death of Peter Artedi by Theodore W. Pietsch. Kitchen table: Clémentine in the Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain. Bathroom: Mouth Wide Open by John Thorne.
Favorite book when you were a child:
ONE?? I can only pick one? Not possible.
The Man with the Purple Eyes by Charlotte Zolotow, Roosevelt Grady by Louisa Shotwell, What Then, Raman? by Shirley Arora, I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevin, The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright.
That's novels. If I were to start listing picture books, you would need another terabyte of space.
Your top five authors:
Not authors but series: the Wallander novels by Henning Mankell; Finding Nouf and City of Veils, which I hope are the start to a series by Zoë Ferraris; the Enzo Files by Peter May. And I'll read anything by M.T. Anderson, Mo Willems and Margo Lanagan.
Book you've faked reading:
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (and I really have read Joyce's Ulysses--twice).
Book you are an evangelist for:
Eliot Pattison's Inspector Shan series.
Book you re-read every few years:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.
Book that changed your life:
I don't remember it, but it was the first book I ever read.
Favorite line from a book:
"My father collects tears." (This is cheating. It's from The Third Gift, the only line I've ever written that I love unreservedly.)
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Half Magic by Edward Eager.