A review by sducharme
A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova

4.0

I loved the style of this graphic memoir - less "comic" and more illustrated. It's a bit more text heavy than most, but still a fast read. The character, Dasha, gives a chronological account of the year when her mother moves to the US for work and leaves her behind with the grandparents. We get a comprehensive look at her life: school, friends, crushes, worries. The tones are dark but she always has spots of pink on her cheeks - sometimes a dark blush, sometimes just a hint of color - which makes her seem full of life and "real" amid a Soviet-era grey setting.

I bought this for our school library and was hoping it would give a picture of life during that time period, but it's really more about her personal adolescent experience which (kind of) could have been set anywhere.