Three Keys is the second book of the Front Desk series. This book is about Mia and her parents after they bought the Calivista Motel from Mr. Yao. Mia is in 6th grade and her teacher is not very kind to Mia and her friend Lupe. Mia's dream is to become a writer, but she loses every writing contest that happens during the class. Afterwards, Mia starts to lose hope, but one of the workers at the Calivista Motel encourages her to never give up. After the contest Mia doesn't give up, and continues to work harder on writing. The class had to write an essay, it was also graded. When Mia got her results she was not happy. She started to lose hope again. Mia had another essay to write. Mia works hard this time determined to get a better grade than last time. She gets the same grade and decides to confront her teacher. She asked the teacher, why is she giving Mia bad grades? Her teacher replies , “because you aren't using the right grammar.” Her teacher decides to give Mia lessons about grammar. Mia has a major impact on her writing after a few lessons with her teacher.
My opinion of this book is that I like how Mia chases her
dream to become an author/ writer, and I also like how one of the workers is
always there to encourage Mia to not give up on her dreams. Another thing I
liked about this book is how Lupe supports Mia all through 6th grade, and
doesn't let her down. What I didn't like about this book is that Mia's teacher
is a bit racist when it comes to giving grades. For example if there is a
"white" student in the class then they will get better grades than
"black" students just because of their skin color. Another thing is
that Mia's teacher isn't the only racist person that Mia has had to dealt with,
there was and still are plenty of other racist people in the world, back then
and today. This story makes me wonder how life was like as an immigrant back
then. I rate this book 4.3 out of 5 stars because it wasn't the worst book but
wasn't the best either. There isn't a lot of drama in this book, so if you’re a
person that likes a lot of drama I wouldn't recommend this book.
Reviewed by Maggie S. Grade 6