Now available in paperback, Dasha Tolstikova’s acclaimed graphic novel A Year Without Mom follows twelve-year-old Dasha through a year full of turmoil after her mother leaves for America.
It is the early 1990s in Moscow, and political change is in the air. But Dasha is more worried about her own challenges as she negotiates family, friendships and school without her mother. Just as she begins to find her own feet, she gets word that she is to join her mother in America — a place that seems impossibly far from everything and everyone she loves.
Dasha Tolstikova’s major talent is on full display in this gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel.
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Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7 Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.
DASHA TOLSTIKOVA is the author and illustrator of The Bad Chair and A Year Without Mom, which received four starred reviews and was selected as an USBBY Outstanding International Book. Dasha has illustrated several picture books, including Violet and the Woof by Rebecca Grabill, Friend or Foe? by John Sobol and The Jacket by Kirsten Hall. Her illustrations have also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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From the Publisher
A Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year, 2016Kirkus Best Middle-Grade Books of the Year, 2015Kirkus Best Middle-Grade Graphic Novels of the Year, 2015USBBY Outstanding International Books, 2016“Deceptively simple, but with great narrative sophistication . . . Fascinating and heartfelt.” — Kirkus, starred review“An absorbing graphic memoir. . . . Readers will wish the sequel were available instantly.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review“A lovely portrayal in words and art of a year in the life of an engaging tween girl from the other side of the world.” — School Library Journal, starred review“The author includes authentic details . . . and, with personality and sincerity, creates an accessible, truthful, and relatable record for readers of a different generation.”— Horn Book, starred review
