A Year Without Mom, by Dasha Tolstikova.

A Year Without Mom follows 12-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. This gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel signals the emergence of Dasha Tolstikova as a major new talent.

The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman.

An irresistible invitation to experience life through a beloved artist's psyche, The Principles of Uncertainty is a compilation of Maira Kalman's New York Times columns. Part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman, these brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images—which initially appear random—ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue.