In the book Room to Dream by Kelly Yang, the third installment of the Front Desk series, Mia and her family finally saved up enough money to go to China. When she arrives, she is linked with an editor of a Chinese middle school newspaper by her grandfather. She starts writing about her own life, with all the drama happening with it. The editor says that is good. Mia is not as sure.
She goes back home, only to see that Calivista is running out of business and that her best friend Lupe got placed in high school math. She is devastated to hear that the Magna hotels bought the two hotels next to them, and their cleaning services don’t even clean everything. Mia eventually works out a plan, and it works! People are coming back to Calivista, and Lupe can help out again.
I liked this book because it encourages readers to go with their dreams and achieve them, proving that you can do anything. Mia faces challenges such as not being able to see her best friend, and Jason turning his back on her. She finds a way to fix these problems, while managing the Motel.
I didn’t like how ignorant Mia was. When her mom was pretending to be rich to impress another woman, Mia gets angry and blurts out things that make them sound poor. I understand why she would be angry, because she doesn’t care what others think but she should have thought about her mom’s feelings. After working and scrubbing bathrooms for weeks straight, when she finally has an opportunity to hang out with cool people at the mall, Mia ruins it for her.
Parachutes by Kelly Yang is a great book for young adults. In this book, Claire, the daughter of a rich Asian family, is told that she will be moving to the US. Dani, the daughter of a Filipino immigrant, will soon become Claire’s host-sister and classmate. Dani has a favorite teacher named Mr. Connelly, who is the coach for the debate club. He really likes Dani’s talents and always invites her to eat with him off campus. Claire, who first seems bratty and spoiled, is actually very smart and after being placed in English 1 for international students, she tests out into the regular English 3 class. They both face many problems, but they also have many similarities. Many characters in this book are Asian students studying in America without their parents nearby. Multiple times they are harassed because of their “parachute” identity.
