FRONT DESK

Ten-year-old Mia Tang runs the front desk of the Calivista Motel every day after school while her parents clean the rooms, and Kelly Yang builds the whole book around how much responsibility that puts on a kid who's also still learning English and dealing with classmates who give her a hard time about it. It's part of the Front Desk series, aimed at readers 8 to 12, and it doesn't soften the money trouble at the center of Mia's family's life — the kind of financial strain that shapes every decision the family makes.

Mia's answer to all of it is her writing — the passion the story keeps coming back to — and it's a smart way to show a kid finding power in her own voice instead of just telling readers that's what's happening. The story doesn't pretend the bigger problems — prejudice, economic hardship — get solved because one determined ten-year-old is clever, but it does show her chipping away at them, which feels truer to a young reader than a tidy ending would. It's a book for a kid who likes a resourceful main character and can handle a story that's honest about money being tight.