What’s better than a good board game, you ask? A heart-warming book, that’s what!

Front Desk is an awesome book by the author Kelly Yang. It’s about a Chinese girl named Mia Tang, and her family recently moved from China to the U.S. It can be hard to move from one place to another, especially if it’s not just for a few months, but forever. Mia feels sorrowful when moving to the U.S. and hates to leave her home. She works at a motel that a Chinese man named Mr. Yao owns. He has one son named Jason, who goes to the same American school as Mia, and a wife named Mrs. Yao. Mia finds it hard to fit in since she moved from China, and sometimes the girls at her school laugh and mock her along with her clothes. 

If you were expecting Mia and her family to be rich, you were wrong. They are a little short on money and work at Mr. Yao’s motel to save up some money. At first, when they came there to work, Mr. Yao was paying them a lot, but then, like Hank, one of the weeklies living at the motel, said, Mr. Yao was actually not as nice and well-mannered as he seemed. Mia deals with other situations other than the girls at her school and the Yao family, like robberies at the motel. Tough situations keep coming at Mia and her family, and proceeding with confidence, honesty, kindness, and courage, she tries to fix life’s problems not only for herself, but for others. 

This book is great for those who feel like they don’t fit in or those who recently moved from one city, town, country, or even continent to another. I love the illustration of Mia at the front desk of the motel she and her family work at. To be honest, I think that she and her family should be treated respectfully because of all of their hard work at the motel. In conclusion, this book is definitely going to remain to be one of my favorites, and I suggest you read it, too! 

Written by Kruti Patel