Front Desk

Mia Tang is aged ten. She and her parents have emigrated from China to the USA two years before the story begins. Her parents believed they were heading for a land of opportunity. Instead however they end up running the Calivista Motel in California. Their boss, Mr Yeo, treats them unfairly. He overworks them and pays them a miserable salary. They are not allowed to use the motel swimming pool. Despite these disadvantages however the Tang family find great satisfaction in the community they form with the motel guests. Mia has a dream. She would like to buy her own motel and manage it herself. The question is whether the family can achieve this aim?
Yang’s book has two main strengths. Its first strength is its characterisation. Mia and her family leap off the page. Very quickly the reader comes to care deeply about the family and their aspiration. Equally significant is the way Yang manages to describe the hardships endured by the family – ill treatment, racial prejudice, financial exploitation, educational difficulty as Mia struggles with an unfamiliar language – all of this while still maintaining the family as three-dimensional, strong and sympathetic characters rather than as mere victims. The story of such strife, all too commonplace in the real world, is rarely narrated for middle grade readers. More people endure such suffering than read about it.