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 learns that she is to join her mother in America - a place that seems impossibly far from everything and everyone she loves. This gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel signals the emergence of Dasha Tolstikova as a major new talent. Dasha Tolstikova is an illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. Her picture book The Jacket, written by Kirsten Hall, was named a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in Brooklyn.