User:Louisemargaretpark

Louise Park has been involved in education and publishing for over 25 years. Today, she continues to combine her knowledge of literacy and reading acquisition with children’s publishing whilst running her own publishing company.

Louise began in schools as a primary school classroom teacher and then moved into teaching literacy and English to new arrival students in primary schools across Sydney, NSW.

Louise began training primary teachers in literacy teaching in the late 80s when she became a literacy advisor to schools and she continued in this role for 6 years. She has spent more than two decades running training courses, seminars and lectures for teachers in the teaching of guided reading, guided writing and literacy acquisition.

As part of her role as seminar presenter and advisor Louise has written numerous training modules, literacy guides and early literacy acquisition programs that are still implemented in primary schools today. In the early 90s she combined her love of literacy with a publishing career and has since moved through a wide variety of publishing roles within the industry including author, editorial, production, project management and Publisher.

In these roles she has been heavily involved in the creation of a large number of popular primary school and trade reading programs, Trade titles and multi-media resources. She has scoped and created and collaborated on some of the biggest reading programs sold worldwide today including Bookshelf and Reading Discovery.

Louise’s last position inside a large publishing house was as general manager and publisher at Scholastic Australia. She left Scholastic to start her own publishing company, Paddlepop Press, in 2005 where she continues to write, package, produce and create children’s books and resources for several prominent publishers including Scholastic, Pan Macmillan, Macmillan Education, ABC books, HarperCollins, Hinkler Books, Lemonfizz Media and more.

Louise continues to deliver seminars to librarians, teachers and parents on literacy and reading.

As an Author Louise’s work with reluctant boy readers sparked a long love affair with writing for boys. Her series, Zac Power Test Drive, has sold all around the world, this extensive series has been phenomenally successful as a series that boys want to read and can read. It is now long established and continues to be a global-best-seller.

Her next series for boys, Boy vs Beast, created with partner, Susannah McFarlane, sold over 250,000 titles in its first 6 months of selling in its home territory.

Earlier this year Louise had a title make it onto the prestigious list: 10 best selling books of all time in Australia (adults, children’s, fiction and nonfiction) with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting it at no.9. She also held 8 of the top 10 slots on the children’s charts for almost two months during February and March 2013.

‘No.9 on a list which includes Jamie Oliver, Jodi Picoult and Nora Roberts. Nielsen BookScan's general manager Shaun Symonds believes it is the first time such a title has ever made it to the top 10. (May 9, 2013)

Louise also writes for preschoolers and girls. Her SmartyCat series for inquisitive toddlers and the incredibly successful boarding school series Star Girl are hitting the sweet spot with their targeted audiences.

Louise writes under the following pseudonyms: H. I. Larry, Mac Park and Poppy Rose