Front Desk 3 – Room to Dream

Kelly Yang's Room to Dream is a warm, sharp story for 10 year olds about a girl who helps run a motel and desperately wants to be a writer.

What happens

Mia Tang has started middle school. She's still at the desk of the Calivista every afternoon with her best friend Lupe, and this year something enormous is happening. Her parents are taking her back to China for six weeks. Her first proper holiday, ever.

She's marking Xs on a calendar. Will her cousin Shen even recognise her when she gets off the plane?

What she hasn't told anybody is what's in her closet. Seventy-nine letters from newspaper editors saying no. Her writing isn't serious enough. Nobody wants the daily goings-on at a motel. She had one piece published a year ago and she's beginning to think that was it.

Then there's the school photo. The photographer tells Mia, Lupe and Jason to move to the back row, where taller white children are standing in the front and staying there. He says he's trying to achieve a certain look. Mia knows exactly what that means and so will your reader.

You should know what this book is about, because it isn't a passing moment. Racism happens on the page here, in ordinary, recognisable ways. A guest changes her mind about staying once Hank, who is Black, is the one behind the desk. The evening news is on and Hank says he's tired of the presumption of guilt that follows him around. Nothing is violent and nothing is explained away, but a child who has felt any of this will feel it again, and a child who hasn't may have questions afterwards. That is rather the point.

The rest is such lovely company. Mia's voice is bright and busy and slightly show-offy. There's Jason and his cooking academy, Lupe and her chicharrones from Tijuana, a gaggle of long-term residents at the kitchen table, and a running joke about Hank packing his own toilet paper for China (Mia is furious about this, and she's right).

It's the third book about Mia Tang and it stands up on its own.

What to read next

If your reader wants to know how a ten-year-old ended up running a motel, the first Front Desk book is in the library. It starts with the family sharing one hamburger and sleeping in their car.