Kelly Yang Books in Order

If you want her core middle grade series: Front Desk → Three Keys → Room to Dream → Key Player.
If you prefer a standalone about the pandemic and family: New from Here.
If you like realistic stories about new immigrants and social media: Finally Seen → Finally Heard.
If you want older teen reads about privilege and speaking up: Parachutes → Private Label.
If you are choosing for younger kids or adult readers: Yes We Will → The Take.

Kelly Yang immigrated to the United States from China when she was six and grew up in Southern California, where her family worked long hours in budget motels. As a kid she often helped at the front desk, translating, answering phones, and welcoming guests.

For her, stories were a kind of escape.

The local library became a second home, a place where she could read for hours and start to imagine different futures from the ones her parents were struggling through.

Yang raced through school, skipping several grades, and started college at thirteen. She studied political science at UC Berkeley, then went on to Harvard Law School, where she graduated in her early twenties. Despite all the years spent preparing for a legal career, she realized she was far more interested in telling stories and helping kids find their voices than in practicing law.

After leaving law, she spent many years in Hong Kong and founded the Kelly Yang Project, an after school program focused on writing, debating, public speaking, and global thinking. Through small classes and energetic workshops, she coached thousands of students, many of whom later headed to competitive universities around the world.

During that time she also wrote regular opinion columns and essays, reflecting on education, politics, and daily life, and her work appeared in major newspapers. All of that writing sharpened her sense of how big issues like migration, inequality, and racism show up in ordinary families.

Her debut middle grade novel, Front Desk, draws closely from her own childhood, following Mia Tang, a ten year old Chinese American girl who runs the front desk of a motel while her parents clean the rooms. The book launched an ongoing series and earned major awards for children’s literature, recognized for the way it balances humor, hardship, and hope.

Yang has continued to write for young readers in many age groups. In New from Here she traces an Asian American family leaving Hong Kong during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, while Finally Seen and Finally Heard follow Lina Gao as she reunites with her parents in the United States, faces book bans and online pressure, and slowly learns to speak up for herself.

For teens, her novels Parachutes and Private Label tackle wealth, class, sexual harassment, and the expectations placed on Chinese and Chinese American students, without losing sight of friendship and first love. She also writes for younger children in the picture book Yes We Will, a celebration of Asian Americans who have changed politics, science, sports, and the arts, and for adults in The Take, a novel about power, age, and ambition in Hollywood.

Across all of her work, Yang returns to a few essential ideas, that kids are capable of real courage, that immigration and belonging are never simple, and that stories can be tools for both survival and change. She writes in a clear, direct style that invites young readers into difficult topics while always leaving room for joy.

Today, Yang lives in Los Angeles with her family. When she is not drafting the next Mia Tang book or visiting schools, she is often talking with readers, walking her dog, or back in a library, looking for the next story that will not let her go.