>> Eun Yang: Good morning, everyone. All right. I'm Eun Yang, anchor at NBC 4 in Washington DC and lover of books. I believe this is my eighth year introducing an author at the National Book Festival. Thank you, Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is a treasure in the city. If you haven't had a chance to visit it, it is truly incredible. I have the honor of introducing Linda Sue Park this year. She'll be signing books from 12:30 to 1:30 in lines 20-23, and as Karen mentioned there will be a short Q and A session at the end of the author presentation. It is particularly special for me to introduce Linda Sue Park because, like her, I am the daughter of Korean immigrants. I have three American children of Korean descent who've read all her books with respect and admiration, and not just because they were assigned in school. And if you're here, you probably know that Miss Park is a prolific and impactful write who received the prestigious Newberry Award for her novel, A Single Shard. You may have even heard her TED Talk where she beautifully explains how reading can develop empathy which leads to engagement. And that reading can help us all become better human beings. Her book, A Long Walk to Water is evidence of that. It is based on the true story of Salva, one of the lost boys of Sudan. He was relocated to the US and eventually returned to his homeland in South Sudan to bring clean water to remote villages. Her readers were moved to do more than just discuss how Salva responded to the great suffering in his life. They raised more than $1 million for water for South Sudan. Her readers did that. Now Miss Park has written a companion book called Nya's Long Walk: A Step at a Time which will no doubt inspire even more people to take action. On top of all that, I cannot overstate how meaningful it is for me and my family to have this Korean American author's books on the shelves in my home, to have her books included as an important part of the curriculum at my children's school, and to have her stories resonate with my family and our community. Representation matters. And thanks to Linda Sue Park, my children can maybe aspire to be authors themselves one day. But they can definitely aspire to change the world any day. Miss Park speaks of the power of books, the superpower of children's books. And in my book that makes here a superhero. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Linda Sue Park. [ Applause ] >> Linda Sue Park: Thank you. And I sincerely mean that. I've been in the children's book business. I've been fortunate to be in it more than 20 years now, but I still have that very basic author insecurity that you show up at an event and it's five people who are all related to you. So I'm truly gratified that you chose to attend this session among all the fantastic offerings that are here today. I am going to talk about Nya's Long Walk: A Step at a Time, just introducing my work which Miss Yang did so well. That I have middle-grade novels, I have picture books and I have YA work. So I've been fortunate to publish across the age spectrum for young readers. My most recent picture book before Nya's Long walk is called Gondra's Treasure. It's available for sale here at the bookstore. And it is about a little girl who is a mixed-race dragon. Her father is an eastern or Asian dragon and her mother is a western or European dragon. And it's amazing that on opposite sides of the planet, the different cultures both developed dragons but they're very different. So wester dragons breathe fire and have wings. Eastern dragons breathe mist and don't have wings. And for example this little girl Gondra breathes mist out of one nostril and fire out of the other. So it's a metaphor for mixed-race families, but as all of us in this room who are family members know, every family is mixed. Here are some of the other picture books. And I understand they also have in that lower corner, they also have Yum! Yuck! which is people sounds around the world. Not words, but sounds. So what do we say in English when something tastes good? Yum or mm. But they don't say that all over the world. What do we say for a sneeze? The sound of a sneeze? Achoo. Right? Achoo. Well, if you are in Korea, you say etchi. And if you are a Tamel speaker, parts of India and Sri Lanka, you say abushku. Does that sound like a sneeze? Right? So my co-author Julia Durango and I collected people sounds from around the world and that book is also available here today. As well as A Single Shard and A Long Walk to Water. Well, to talk about Nya's Long Walk, I first do have to talk about A Long Walk to Water. And I just want to update very quickly on that figure of how much money readers of Long Walk have raised to help bring clean water to young people and communities in South Sudan. That is now actually up to $4 million. [ Applause ] It really does blow me away, because when I wrote the book, collaborating with Salva, I saw Salva as an example of that adage that one person really can change the world. I had no idea that young readers would go to the teachers and the adults in their lives and say, "What can we do to help?" The fundraising has been largely student-driven which has just really just amazed me. All right, so A Long Walk to Water is the story of Salva Dut, a family friend who came to the US as a refugee from the Second Sudanese Civil War. Okay? He was one of the so-called lost boys who had to walk hundreds and hundreds of miles to try to escape the ferocity of the war. There were altogether during this phase of the war in the 1980's and '90's about 17,000 lost boys who were walking like this. About one-third of them did not make it to safety; 6,000 of them died along the way. That's how brutal the trip was. But Salva was one of the lucky ones who reached the safety of a refugee camp in Ethiopia which looked like this. This is actually Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. During the height of the war, anywhere from 80,000-120,000 people lived like this at Kakuma refugee camp. Not a wonderful place to live. The only really good thing about it was that it was safe from the war. So Salva entered the refugee camps alone, orphaned as a child at the age of 11, and lived in camps like this one for more than 10 years. Then the people in the camp got the incredible news that the United States was going to sponsor several thousand refugees on fast-track visas to come to this country. And Salva received one of those visas to come to the United States. He eventually settled near Rochester, New York which is where I live. And that is why first my husband and eventually I got to meet him. All right. This is what it looks like in South Sudan where Salba grew up. And in the book there is a second story. There is the story of Salba's escape from the war alternating with the story of a young girl who lives in South Sudan today whose name is Nya. Nya lives in an area that looks like this. You can see that there are small structures. The small ones are the houses for the people. The larger ones are the barns for the animals because Nya and her community make their living as cattle farmers. They keep herds of cows and that's how they make their living. You can see also that it's not a desert. Geographers call it semi-arid or semi-desert. There is enough rainfall every year. There's a rainy season for grass, bushes, small trees. There is no infrastructure. You can see a dirt track in the picture, but there are no roads. No electricity, no plumbing. Nya's job is to walk every day to fetch water for her family. This is a girl that my husband met in South Sudan in 2015. She is nine years old at the time the photo was taken. That is a seven-and-a-half-gallon jerry can that she's got on her head, which would be heavy for a grown man to pick up. And she picks it up, puts it on her head and makes a two-hour journey from the water hole to her home with this jug on her head. It takes her two hours to walk to the water hole, two hours to get back and then she has a little bit of lunch or something to eat, and then makes a return journey two hours to the water hole and two hours back home. She spends eight hours a day walking for water for her family. If you walk eight hours a day to fetch water, you do not have time to go to school. As of 2014, South Sudan had one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world for girls and women. About 97% of them could not read or write. 97%. That is pretty darn close to 100%. Right? Nya fetches water from water holes that look like this, hand-dug wells that fill up with groundwater. As you can imagine, that water is not clean and not safe. And sometimes people say, "Well, I hope they at least boil it before they drink it, because boiling water can kill germs, right?" But look at the tiny amount she's scooping up in that bowl. That water hole is serving several dozen families. Her family's share of it is very small. What happens when you boil a small amount of water? It evaporates, right? You can't boil the water. You have to drink it just like it is. And that is what the water looks like that millions of people all over the world, not just South Sudan, but in many countries that don't have a safe supply of water, what they have to drink. We even experience it her in the United States after disasters, after things like hurricanes and tornadoes and in places like, unfortunately, Flint, Michigan for years now. If you do not have a safe source of water -- every human being on the planet has to have water to live. Your choice in this case in South Sudan is if you drink this water, you might get really sick. If you don't drink it, you will die, because it is the only water there is. It is especially dangerous for children because children do not have -- have not developed their immune systems to contend with the microbes that are in the water. So dirty water is worldwide the number one source of child death. Children under five die from dirty water more than any other cause in the world. All right, one day some strangers arrive in Nya's village with equipment that she has never seen. She doesn't know what it is or what it does. She thinks it looks like a red iron giraffe. A little bit, right? She knows what giraffes are, right? They are there to put a clean water well in her village. It turns out that underneath much of South Sudan there is a clean water aquafer about the size of the United States' Lake Eerie. But it is between 100 and 800 feet below the surface. You will never get there with a shovel. You have to have heavy equipment, and that is what these strangers have brought. Whoops. Uh-oh. OH, there. There we go. Okay. When the water first comes out of the borehole it looks as terrible as the water they've been drinking. But that's just debris from the construction. And whenever you dig for something that is under the ground, you are not sure of finding it, right? You can't see it, whether that's oil or diamonds or gold. You're like, "We think there's some here," and you dig down and you hope you've dug in the right place, right? That is also true of water that you're digging for under the ground. Salva's organization has dug, had drilled 399 wells all over South Sudan now serving half a million people. Half a million people now have clean water who didn't have it before. And his success rate in drilling for wells is exactly 100%. And he talks to hydrologists and geologists here in the United States and they're like, "No, no, no. Nobody gets 100% drilling for stuff under the ground. How can you possibly have 100% success rate?" And I asked Salva that and he said, "Oh, it's very easy. You go to the village and you look around and you find the biggest tree and you stand there and you look around. And you find the second biggest tree and you put the well right in the middle because the trees know where the water is." It's like the lowest tech you can have. No fancy measuring equipment, no seismographs, no nothing like that. Tree, second biggest tree, well, 100%. Right? We think we're so smart here, right? [Laughs] All right. So 100%. Now, that means that there will be a source of clean water in the village after they install a hand pump and pour a concrete apron. And the girls will not have to walk eight hours a day to fetch water anymore, so what are they going to have time to do? >> School. >> Linda Sue Park: They're going to have time to go to school. So clean water doesn't just mean water and better health. It actually changes the entire dynamic for communities like this. Businesses can start up. There can be clinics. There can be schools. So I wrote this book called Nya's Long Walk because if you read A Long Walk to Water, most of it is Salva's story. It alternates with chapters form Nya's point of view. I took one of those chapters and expanded it into a picture book. Oh, that's me and Salva taken just recent. He now lives in South Sudan. He moved back and visits the United States three or four times a year. So I always try to make sure to see him while he's here. Okay. Nya's Long Walk. Oh, this is the illustrator, the wonderful Brian Pinkney who has won Caldecott honor and Coretta Scott King awards. And I was very, very honored that he agreed to illustrate this book. So I'm going to read the beginning of it now and we'll see how much time we have to get through. So okay. Nya's Long Walk: A Step at a Time. "Come on," Nya said. "Why are you so slow today?" "I'm tired," Akir said. Nya sighed. It was a long way to the water hole. "I'll tell mama that you were trouble," she said. "Don't," Akir begged. "I'll be good." She started walking a little faster. "Akir, look." Nya pointed to the horizon where she could see a cloud of dust. "What is it? I can't see," Akir whined. "Antelope? Or a truck?" Too far away to tell. Probably antelope. Trucks were a rare sight in their village. Akir was slowing down again. Nya said, "You know the clapping game? Let's sing the song." "And do the clapping too?" "No, not while we walk, but later, okay?" At the water hole they took long drinks. Nya filled the jerry can, then they played the clapping game twice. "Time to go," Nya said. Akir dragged her feet. She walked more and more slowly. Soon she began to cry and sat down on the ground. "I can't walk anymore," she said. "It's too far and I'm too tired." "Don't be silly," Nya snapped. "You've walked this before lots of times." Akir cried and snuffled and hiccupped. She looked at Nya, her eyes very big. Nya frowned. Akir was not a crybaby. Usually she skipped along, chattering like a starling. Nya knelt in front of Akir and felt her face. Akir's forehead and cheeks were burning hot. She had stopped crying and was quiet and still. Akir was sick. Maybe very sick. Nya felt worry swelling inside her. They were at least half a morning's walk away from home. "I must run and get help," she thought. She took a few steps, then glanced back at Akir. No, she could not leave Akir alone. Should they stay and wait for help? It might be hours before someone came. Akir would get sicker and sicker. "I will have to carry her and the water too." Her mother would need the water to help make Akir better. Nya opened the jerry can and poured out half the water. She picked up the can, hefted its weight and shook her head. Still too heavy. She poured out a little more. "Akir?" Akir opened her eyes. They were dull and sad. "I know you don't feel well," Nya said, trying to keep her voice steady. "But you have to climb on my back and hold tight. Can you do that?" Akir got on Nya's back. Nya used her headscarf to tie Akir in place the way her mother did. Then she picked up the jerry can and began to walk. Akir was heavy. The water was heavy. Nya could only take a few steps before she had to rest. Home was so far away. Tears filled Nya's eyes. "I can't do it. It's too far." Nya saw a tamarind tree up ahead. She swallowed and blinked away her tears. "I'll go to the tree. I'll put Akir down there." When she got to the tree, she thought she might be able to walk a little more. "Those thorn bushes. I'll stop there." At the bushes she rested for a moment. Akir had fallen asleep. Farther on, Nya saw an old stump. "I can make it to that stump. I know I can." Step by step, a bit at a time, Nya kept walking. So it is not what my friends call happy, nicey, rhymey story, right? It's a story about the very daily struggles faced by millions of children all over the world. And there will be parents who will say, you know, "This is too touch a story for my little one." And each parent will make the judgement about whether the story is right for their children to hear. But keep in mind that there are children who live this. So if there are children who live it, maybe the children who don't have to can learn about that. And I promise that there is a happy ending. All right, I am nearly out of time. But I would have time for maybe one or two questions if somebody wants to hurry to the mic. Good, a brave soul. >> In Project Mulberry, what was it like to be talking to Julia? >> Linda Sue Park: Oh, that's a great question. In one of my novels I break what's called the fourth wall in Project Mulberry. And the character argues with the author about what should happen next. So for example, the character says, "I hate my little brother. Will you please delete him?" [ Laughter ] And the author says, "I love your little brother. He's funny. No, I'm keeping him in the story." And they argue about what should happen next. I wanted to give young people, young readers, some idea of how a story gets made. And so everything that happens with Julia and the author whose name is Miss Park in between the chapters is something that I struggled with as I was writing the story. Thank you for asking that question. >> Hello. I love all of your books, and they all have such impactful meaning. What are you working on next? >> Linda Sue Park: Oh, thank you for asking. I have a middle-grade novel coming out next spring called Prairie Lotus. And as a young child, I loved the Laura Ingles Wilder Little House series which have now proven to be quite problematic in many ways. So this was my attempt at a reconciliation: a half-Asian girl in the Laura Ingles Wilder Little House setting. And what happens to her, what happens to a person of color and how as wonderful as the Wilder books are, they present a very skewed and inaccurate view of American history. So it's sort of Laura Ingles Wilder, I love it, but here, I fixed it for you. Okay? So I hope you will look for that book next spring, March 2020. Thank you for coming. Have a wonderful day here. [ Applause ]