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  • Front Desk

  • Written by: Kelly Yang
  • Narrated by: Sunny Lu
  • Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (58 ratings)

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Front Desk cover art

Front Desk

Written by: Kelly Yang
Narrated by: Sunny Lu
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Publisher's Summary

Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Children's Literature!

Mia Tang has a lot of secrets.

Number one: She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, 10-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests.

Number two: Her parents hide immigrants. And if the mean motel owner, Mr. Yao, finds out they've been letting them stay in the empty rooms for free, the Tangs will be doomed.

Number three: She wants to be a writer. But how can she when her mom thinks she should stick to math because English is not her first language?

It will take all of Mia's courage, kindness, and hard work to get through this year. Will she be able to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and guests, escape Mr. Yao, and go for her dreams?

©2018 Kelly Yang (P)2018 Listening Library

What the critics say

"Many readers will recognize themselves or their neighbors in these pages." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

What listeners say about Front Desk

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How I listened to the book

I liked how the story goes the girl has some challenges which are developing her character in the story and help us understand what she went through.
Overall the story was great

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

played it for my class

This book is great! I played it for my grade 6 class. certainly some parts we had to talk about. some stronger racial language and one violent scene.
I would recommend an even older age group or make sure young readers are a little bit more mature for some of this content.
The book generated some great discussions and went well with our elections unit.
this is a really great book and worth a read!

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AMAZING

THE BEST BOOK EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amazing AND CHEAP its sooooooo good 😊 I have the book and audio

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Everyone needs to read this

I’ll be coming back to this book often. It was an amazing listen, and as a second generation immigrant I could relate to many of the things that our wonderful protagonist had gone through (all the way down to the coin collection, funny enough). This book helps shine a light on the struggles immigrants face, from financial issues, discrimination, adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, etc. If every child - hell, every adult too - read this book, I feel like they’d walk away from it with more compassion and kindness towards all people. 10/10

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