Loudoun County Public Library recently announced the selection of the middle-grade novel Front Desk for its 2020 1book 1community program. This award-winning novel by Kelly Yang explores immigration, poverty, classism and racism through the eyes of Mia Tang, a 10-year-old Chinese girl who helps her parents run a motel where they’re secretly housing immigrants at great personal risk. Mia will have to find the courage and determination to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and motel guests, and follow her dream.  

The novel is loosely based on the author’s childhood experiences. Kelly Yang immigrated to the United States when she was 6 and grew up in Southern California, where she and her parents worked in three different motels. But her time behind the front desk did not hold her back academically. Yang went to college at the University of California, Berkeley when she was only 13 and majored in Political Science. At 17, she entered Harvard Law School. 

Throughout her many years of hard work and academic success, Yang found relief and comfort in writing. It’s not all that surprising then that after graduating from law school at the age of 20, she decided to give up law to pursue her passion for writing and teaching children about the craft of writing. In 2005, she founded the Kelly Yang Project to help students in Asia find their voice and become more powerful writers and public speakers. She designed the KYP curriculum to help even young children develop a passion for writing. 

Soon, she found her own writing outlet as a columnist for the South China Morning Post, which she kept for many years. In addition, her writing has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. Her first novel, Front Desk, was published in 2018 and was awarded the 2019 Asian Pacific American Award for Children’s Literature. Yang has already published its sequel, Three Keys, and her first young adult novel titled Parachutes.

Free copies of Front Desk are available at local branch libraries,and be sure to check out the special live online discussion with Kelly Yang on Saturday, December 12, at 7 p.m. (https://bit.ly/2J1fh3Y ).