By: Cleo Newton
*Warning: This review contains spoilers*
‘Front Desk’ by Kelly Yang is a book about a girl named Mia. She and her parents are immigrants from China. Her parents immigrated to America in hopes that they will be able to get a good job that pays a lot of money and have a nice house for their family.
At first, Mia’s parents struggle to find a job but soon find someone who seems really kind and generous, offering them the job to clean motel rooms and check customers in. The family is really happy because they think that they are going to get paid $150 a day after adding up all the rooms, and that they’ll be able to swim in the pool in the yard. They even get to live at the motel. Later, they find out that their boss, Mr. Yao, isn’t a good person, and that they won’t actually make $150 a day but much less.
Mia is a 10-year-old girl, even though she and her family works at a motel, she still has to go to school. At school she has to face issues like racism and discrimination. The girls at her school make fun of how she looks, make assumptions about her race, and hold her to stereotypical Asian standards. She also has to be in the same class as her parent’s boss’s son, Jason. Even though this is the case, she still manages to make one friend at school, Lupe.
Everyday when Mia gets home from school, she has to help her parents clean the motel rooms and deal with rude customers. Her parents even have to clean the customer’s clothes. As well as dealing with customer’s, her parents are hiding other immigrants in the motel until they can leave. Lupe’s dad is a cable repairman; he helps out Mia’s family when one of the customer’s TV breaks.
Mia really likes to write. She learns about an essay writing contest; the one who wins will get a motel. Mia wants to enter this contest so that she and her family won’t have to work for the terrible boss they do now. But in order to enter, she has to pay money. She decided to save money for the contest by putting out a tip jar.
One day, Mia comes home to find her mother injured. She was attacked by two people who were robbing the motel. They find out that one of their close friends, Hank, got arrested. While her mom was getting attacked, he threw a rock at the robbers but when the police arrived he was the only one there. Even though he was helping protect Mia’s mom, he was the one that got arrested. Thankfully, he only stayed in jail for one night before being let out. Mia and her dad drove her mom to the hospital, and because the hospital bill was so high, Mia had to use the money she got from the tip jar to pay for the bill.
She now had to find a new way to enter the essay writing contest, Mia sells her dad’s lucky pennies. These pennies are special because they are worth a lot; she makes $300 dollars selling them. She writes and submits her essay, it talks about what she would do if she owned a motel. The day after writing the essay, she submits it. A few weeks later, she receives a letter from the Vermont Motel Giveaway. Hank reads the letter to Mia and she unfortunately doesn’t win.
As things are already difficult, they find out that Mr. Yao is going to sell the motel for $300,000. This means that the next person who buys the motel could fire them and they could lose their job. After thinking about this for a while, they decide that they are going to try to buy the motel. Hank, being the great friend he is, immediately handed over the little money he had, which was less than one hundred dollars. Mia wrote letters about talking about who she is and giving reasons why she thinks that they should help her buy the motel. She goes around handing them around hoping that this message will convince people to donate some money.
As people donate money to the family, they finally make the amount of money needed to buy the motel. Unfortunately, Mr. Yao tells them that there is another buyer who’s willing to pay $50,000 more than the original price. Mia and her family feel crushed knowing that they won’t be able to buy the motel. As a last resort, they turn to loan sharks to get the money they need.
At school, Jason tells her that Mr. Yao is lying and that there is no other buyer. When school ends, Mia rushes home just in time to tell her parents what Jason told her. After sending off the loan sharks, they buy the motel from Mr. Yao.
The book ends with Mia, her parents, and her friends celebrating by jumping into the pool.
Overall, I think this was a very good book, I like how the author showed the development of Mia and the way she used her writing skills to help herself and other people. There are 4 other books that come after ‘Front Desk’, ‘Three Keys’, ‘Room to Dream’, ‘Key Player’, and ‘Top Story’. I hope you consider reading this book after reading this article!
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