{"id":38301,"date":"2015-09-02T11:11:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T15:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=38301"},"modified":"2015-09-02T12:28:37","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T16:28:37","slug":"year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Dasha is 12. She lives in a four-room apartment in Moscow with her mother and her grandparents. Her father lives in Los Angeles. She would like a cat, but she’s too allergic.<\/p>\n

One night, she overhears her grandmother assuring her mother: “She will be fine. We will take good care of her. You have to take this opportunity.” Suddenly, her mother is leaving for a graduate program in advertising in America, and Dasha must\u00a0say a most reluctant goodbye.<\/p>\n

Not quite a child, not yet a young adult, Dasha teeters between need and defiance. She accompanies her grandmother to a writers’ retreat outside the city. She goes back to school. She hangs out with her two best friends, she goes to art class. She reads\u00a0Gone with the Wind<\/em> to learn more about America. She goes to Germany and discovers Nutella. She has girlfriend problems. She has boy problems. She isn’t cool enough. She fails an exam. She cries in her grandmother’s lap. Twice (!), she thinks she might be in love …<\/p>\n

And then her mother is back: “seeing her is like finally taking a breath after holding it in for a year.” But she returns with unexpected news, and no amount of begging and pleading will change the year to come.<\/p>\n

Adolescence is challenging enough, but Dasha must confront\u00a0additional layers of multi-generational gaps: she misses her mother, she wishes she could live with her aunt, she has a tenuous relationship with her estranged father, she yells terrible words at her disciplining\u00a0grandfather. Beyond her personal dramas is a country in political turmoil: she watches as the adults worry, but\u00a0every time Dasha\u00a0hears the word ‘coup’\u00a0\u2013 as in\u00a0coup d’\u00e9tat when\u00a0President Gorbachev is ousted\u00a0\u2013 she\u00a0can only\u00a0think of “small birds nesting.” In some things, she is still so very young …<\/p>\n

That creator Dasha Tolstikova<\/a> is now a Brooklyn-based illustrator\u00a0provides clues as to\u00a0what happens next. But don’t rush to jump too far ahead, because\u00a0her debut memoir needs to be attentively appreciated and engagingly\u00a0savored. Just as her text is\u00a0candid and direct, so, too, her black-and-white-with-splashes-of-color line drawings exude simple charm and whimsy. The result is an open invitation to share in a year of living not-quite-independently as this thoughtful tween navigates towards an\u00a0inevitable\u00a0teenagerhood about\u00a0to be.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Middle Grade, Young Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dasha is 12. She lives in a four-room apartment in Moscow with her mother and her grandparents. Her father lives in Los Angeles. She would like a cat, but she’s too allergic. One night, she overhears her grandmother assuring her mother: “She will be fine….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,30,20,712,2006,31],"tags":[6608,58,6540,10,11,135,25,13,129,6539],"class_list":["post-38301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memoir","category-middle-grade-readers","category-nonfiction","category-russian","category-russian-american","category-young-adult-readers","tag-bookdragon","tag-coming-of-age","tag-dasha-tolstikova","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-grandparents","tag-immigration","tag-love","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-year-without-mom"],"yoast_head":"\nA Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dasha is 12. She lives in a four-room apartment in Moscow with her mother and her grandparents. Her father lives in Los Angeles. She would like a cat, but she’s too allergic. One night, she overhears her grandmother assuring her mother: “She will be fine....\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-09-02T15:11:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-09-02T16:28:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/08\/A-Year-Without-Mom-by-Dasha-Tolstikova-on-BookDragon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"785\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova - BookDragon","og_description":"Dasha is 12. She lives in a four-room apartment in Moscow with her mother and her grandparents. Her father lives in Los Angeles. She would like a cat, but she’s too allergic. One night, she overhears her grandmother assuring her mother: “She will be fine....","og_url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/","og_site_name":"BookDragon","article_published_time":"2015-09-02T15:11:48+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-09-02T16:28:37+00:00","og_image":[{"width":785,"height":1024,"url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/08\/A-Year-Without-Mom-by-Dasha-Tolstikova-on-BookDragon.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@SmithsonianAPA","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/","url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/","name":"A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova - BookDragon","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-09-02T15:11:48+00:00","dateModified":"2015-09-02T16:28:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/a00f6dcfcb279c75f3f992ad2919d51d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/year-without-mom-dasha-tolstikova\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#website","url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/","name":"BookDragon","description":"Books for the Diverse Reader","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/a00f6dcfcb279c75f3f992ad2919d51d","name":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79b5f08575e8962bd00388cd126d374b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79b5f08575e8962bd00388cd126d374b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/@SmithsonianAPA"],"url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author\/riemert\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38301"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39588,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38301\/revisions\/39588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}